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 3 1822025102146 
 
 PROPHECY AND RELIGION
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 C. F. CLAY, MANAGER 
 LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. 
 
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 CALCUTTA I MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 
 
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 TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF 
 
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 TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 PROPHECY & RELIGION 
 
 STUDIES IN THE LIFE OF JEREMIAH 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN SKINNER, D.D. 
 
 WESTMINSTER COLLEGE, 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1922
 
 TO 
 
 THE STUDENTS 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 OF WESTMINSTER COLLEGE 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 
 IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THIRTY YEARS 
 
 OF WORK AND FELLOWSHIP
 
 PREFACE 
 
 WHEN the Council of the Cunningham Lecture- 
 ship did me the honour of inviting me to be the 
 Lecturer for 1920, leaving the choice of a subject to 
 myself, I gratefully accepted the appointment, and 
 offered a course on the life and writings of Jeremiah. 
 Had I been younger, I should have preferred, instead 
 of adding another to the many books on Jeremiah 
 which have recently appeared in English, to try and 
 break ground in some less frequented field of Old 
 Testament theology. As it was, my choice was in- 
 fluenced by a long-standing interest in the study of 
 Jeremiah's work and personality, as well as a hope that 
 I might still be able to contribute something to an 
 understanding of his message to his own age and to us. 
 The Lectures were delivered, under the same title 
 as the present volume, in New College, Edinburgh, 
 in the spring of 1920, and are now published in accord- 
 ance with the terms of the Lectureship. I have to 
 express my regret that publication has been unavoidably 
 delayed beyond the allotted period; and also to explain 
 that in preparing the work for the press I have not only 
 expanded the lectures but arranged the matter under 
 other headings and in a somewhat different order. In 
 general, however, the substance of the six original 
 lectures will be found in Chapters I and II; III and 
 IV; VIII; VI and VII; XI; XV and XVIII. The re- 
 maining nine chapters are added in order to present a 
 fuller picture of Jeremiah (though still an incomplete 
 one) than was possible in the lectures.
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 To three friends in particular my warmest acknow- 
 ledgments are due for help in planning the Lectures 
 and publishing the book: to Dr George Steven, Edin- 
 burgh, for wise counsel and criticisms on many points; 
 to the Rev. H. C. Carter, Cambridge, who read the 
 manuscript and prepared the Index; and to Mr T. W. 
 Manson, M.A., of Westminster College, who assisted 
 me in revising the proofs and compiled the list of 
 Scripture passages. 
 
 J.S. 
 
 April 1922
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I INTRODUCTORY THE PLACE OF PRO- 
 PHECY IN THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL . i 
 
 II PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION . . 18 
 
 III THE NORTHERN PERIL . . . . 35 
 
 IV THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL . . 53 
 V THE CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE . 74 
 
 VI JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY . . 89 
 
 VII IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM . .108 
 
 VIII THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST . 138 
 
 IX UNREAL WORSHIP TEMPLE AND 
 
 SACRIFICE 165 
 
 X PROPHETIC INSPIRATION . . . .185 
 
 XI INDIVIDUAL RELIGION THE INNER LIFE 
 
 OF JEREMIAH 201 
 
 XII THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH . . 231 
 
 XIII THE WAY OF LIFE AND THE WAY OF 
 
 DEATH 251 
 
 XIV WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH . . 272 
 
 XV THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: I. THE 
 
 LETTER TO THE EXILES . . .285
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XVI THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: II. THE 
 
 RESTORATION OF ISRAEL . . .298 
 
 XVII THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: III. THE 
 
 MESSIANIC KING 310 
 
 XVIII THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: IV. THE 
 
 NEW COVENANT 320 
 
 XIX LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH . . . -335 
 LIST OF SCRIPTURAL PASSAGES . . . -353 
 INDEX . .358
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY THE PLACE OF 
 PROPHECY IN THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 
 
 alliance of Prophecy and Religion in the 
 JL history of Israel has been one of the most influential 
 factors in what Lessing called the Education of the 
 Human Race. It is a phenomenon to which the history 
 of religion affords no real parallel. It is true that Hebrew 
 Prophecy has its roots and antecedents in widely 
 diffused primitive ideas and customs which are found 
 everywhere among peoples in the early stages of civilisa- 
 tion. There is a stage of human development at which 
 the instinctive craving for supernatural guidance pro- 
 duces a class of professional persons supposed to be in 
 intimate communication with the unseen powers which 
 control human destiny, and therefore able to foretell the 
 future and give direction in difficult matters of policy 
 and conduct. If we take the word Prophecy in this wide 
 and vague sense it may be said that prophecy was a 
 universal phenomenon of the ancient world. The re- 
 markable thing is not that prohecy of a sort should 
 have appeared in Israel, but that it should have persisted 
 so long as a vehicle of the best political guidance and 
 the highest ethical and religious teaching. In the more 
 progressive communities of antiquity (like Greece and 
 Rome) the repute of prophecy or divination tended to 
 decline with the advance of popular enlightenment, and 
 matters of importance came to be settled more and more 
 on broad grounds of reason and expediency, until the 
 Roman statesman marvelled that two augurs could meet 
 
 S.P.R. i
 
 2 INTRODUCTORY [CH. 
 
 in the street without laughing in each other's faces. The 
 peculiarity in the case of Israel is that this elsewhere 
 discredited institution reached a height of spirituality 
 and moral influence which makes its records full of 
 instruction even to the mind of to-day. The contrast to 
 the ethnic religions is emphasised by Dr Warde Fowler 
 in his lectures on The Religious Experience of the Roman 
 People. He writes : 
 
 For instead of developing, as did the wise man or seer of 
 Israel, into the mouthpiece of God in His demand for the 
 righteousness of man, the Roman diviner merely assisted the 
 pontifex in his work of robbing religion of the idea of righteous- 
 ness. Divination seems to be a universal instinct of human nature, 
 a perfectly natural instinct, arising out of man's daily needs, 
 hopes, fears; but though it may have had the chance, even at 
 Rome, it has never been able, except among the Jews, to emerge 
 from its cramping chrysalis of magic, and become a really 
 valuable stimulant of morality (pp. cit. p. 292). 
 
 This result is undoubtedly due to the essentially 
 ethical character of the religion of Israel, which purified 
 and ennobled every institution of the national life which 
 came under its influence. Even in religions of a much 
 more primitive type, the element of divination does not 
 cover the whole area of religious practice and belief. 
 There is always an established order of ritual, a recog- 
 nised code of social morals, a system of taboos^ and so 
 forth, on the due observance of which the maintenance 
 of good relations between the tribe and the tribal deity 
 is understood to depend. This constitutes religion in its 
 public and traditional aspect. The soothsayer is only 
 called in to answer particular questions o c importance 
 for the individual or the community, for which the 
 ordinary rules of religious observance provide no solu- 
 tion, and it becomes necessary to resort to occult methods 
 in order to ascertain the mind of the god. The same 
 distinction in a more refined form meets us in the higher
 
 i] INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 religion of the Old Testament. We find it in the utter- 
 ances of the prophets themselves. While they claim to 
 possess an exclusive insight into the secret purpose of 
 Yahwe in His providential dealings with His people, 
 they constantly appeal to a traditional Tora, or revela- 
 tion, of Yahwe, common to all Israelites, in which the 
 character of Yahwe and the conditions of intercourse 
 with Him are authoritatively declared 1 . Hosea speaks 
 of the priests as the official custodians of this tradition; 
 and to the sinful neglect of this function on the part of 
 the priesthood he attributes the universal defection from 
 the national faith (Hos. iv. 6). Now the prophets regard 
 themselves as the exponents of the essential principles 
 of this authentic revelation of Yahwe; and their clear 
 intuitive perception of these moral and spiritual truths 
 goes far to account for the supreme position they hold 
 among the religious teachers of the world. Being men 
 imbued with the spirit of revealed religion, and seeing 
 all things in the light of its principles, they were able 
 to develop those principles in their application to new 
 situations as they arose, and bring forth new truth from 
 the depths of their inspired insight into the mind and 
 character of God. But this does not explain the singular 
 fact that in Israel alone a spiritual religion allied itself 
 with the prophetic impulse, finding in it its most effective 
 means of expression and bringing its latent possibilities 
 to a perfection nowhere else realised. 
 
 There is a tendency among modern writers to explain 
 away this phenomenon by asserting that the higher 
 prophecy of the Old Testament has nothing whatever 
 in common with the earlier manifestations of prophetic 
 inspiration in Israel, still less of course with the cruder 
 forms of divination which prevailed among other peoples. 
 From this point of view the prophet is simply an inspired 
 
 1 On the sense in which the prophets speak of the TSra of Yahwe, 
 see pp. 33 if. below.
 
 4 INTRODUCTORY [CH. 
 
 religious personality, who is a true organ of revelation 
 just in so far as he ceases to be what the ancient world 
 meant by a prophet l . That view seems to me one-sided 
 and unhistorical. The prophet was not merely nor in 
 the first instance a teacher of religion, but a seer, who 
 perceives and announces beforehand what Yahwe is 
 about to do. Prediction is no secondary or accidental 
 feature of Old Testament prophecy even in its highest 
 manifestations, but a central interest round which all 
 
 1 Among recent statements of this theory mention may be made of 
 the able and suggestive treatment of the subject by Prof. Buttenwieser 
 in his book on The Prophets of Israel (1914), vide pp. 138 ff. His 
 argument rests partly on the emphatic declaration of Amos, the father 
 of literary prophecy, that he was no Nab? nor son of a Nab? (vii. 14): 
 i.e. he was not a member of a prophetic guild. But over against this 
 declaration we have to set the fact that the same Amos instances the 
 raising up of Neb?im as a proof of Yahwe's peculiar love for Israel 
 (ii. n). From the fact that Amos repudiates all connexion with the 
 degenerate professional prophets of his own day it by no means follows 
 that he did not regard himself as standing in the succession of inspired 
 men through whom Yahwe had formerly made His presence known in 
 the life of Israel; nor is there any reason to assume that he looked on 
 the manner of his inspiration as essentially different from theirs: the 
 verb which he uses to denote his own prophetic activity (hinnab?, 
 vii. 1 5) is that which was commonly applied to the Neb?im. The real 
 point at issue, however, is whether a great and even sudden advance in 
 religious enlightenment involves an absolute breach of continuity with 
 the kind of experience which was admittedly characteristic of the earlier 
 nabi'ism. The case is closely analogous to the development of self- 
 conscious reason in man from the rudimentary intelligence of the lower 
 animals. The two are separated by an immeasurable chasm, so that the 
 higher can never be explained in terms of the lower; and yet the per- 
 sistence of animal appetites and instincts in the mental life of man proves 
 conclusively that somehow it has sprung from that of the animals. 
 Similarly in the spiritual prophecy of the Old Testament we find traces 
 of ecstasy, visions and auditions, which are obviously survivals of states 
 of consciousness belonging to prophecy of a lower grade. And the fact 
 that the great prophets far surpassed their predecessors in their appre- 
 hension of religious truth is no reason for denying the reality of the 
 ecstatic element in their experience, or for explaining it away as a mere 
 rhetorical accommodation to traditional modes of expression.
 
 i] INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 other forms of prophetic activity ranged themselves. It 
 is assumed in the Old Testament that spiritual prophecy 
 supplies in Israel the place which divination occupies 
 in other religions. 'For there is no enchantment in 
 Jacob, nor divination in Israel; at the (right) time it is 
 said to Jacob and to Israel what God is about to do' 
 (Num. xxiii. 23)*. 'Those nations which thou shalt 
 dispossess listen to soothsayers and to diviners; but thee 
 Yahwe thy God suffereth not so to do. A prophet from 
 the midst of thy brethren will Yahwe thy God raise up 
 to thee; unto him shall ye hearken' (Deut. xviii. 14 f.). 
 This of course does not mean that prophecy had no 
 higher aim than to procure oracles unveiling the secrets 
 of the future, but it does imply that in displacing the 
 diviner and magician the true prophet took over their 
 functions on a purer religious basis, satisfying the 
 legitimate needs to which they bore witness and to 
 which they falsely ministered. There is no discontinuity 
 in the development of prophecy from the older Nabiism 
 of the period from Samuel to Elisha, to the new type 
 of prophecy inaugurated by Amos. Nabiism had its 
 unprogressive and degenerate representatives between 
 whom and the true prophets there was an irreconcileable 
 antagonism; but as the medium of Yahwe's intercourse 
 with His people it had embodied the same fundamental 
 principle, and served the same end, as the work of 
 Amos and his successors. It is this close and permanent 
 association between religion and prophecy which is the 
 distinctive feature of the Old Testament dispensation, 
 and we can see how each worked for the advancement 
 of the other : the ethical genius of the religion directing 
 the vision of the prophet to the eternal principles of 
 the divine government, while the insight of the prophet 
 
 1 The verse is exegetically difficult, and is widely regarded as an 
 interpolation; but the meaning can hardly be other than the rendering 
 here given; see Gray, International Critical Commentary, ad loc.
 
 6 INTRODUCTORY [en. 
 
 drew forth from the national faith the essential truth 
 about God which at last gave the world a perfect 
 religion. 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that there must have been 
 something in the religion of Israel on the one hand, and 
 something in the prophetic consciousness on the other 
 hand, which established an enduring contact between 
 them, and made their co-operation so fruitful in spiritual 
 results. There are at all events certain aspects of the 
 relation which may here be noted as contributing to a 
 clearer understanding of the prophetic movement in 
 Israel, and in particular of Jeremiah's position in the 
 history of that movement. 
 
 First of all, as regards the Old Testament religion, 
 we observe that it is a relation between a personal Being 
 on one side and a national entity on the other. Its 
 fundamental principle is, ' Yahwe the God of Israel, and 
 Israel the people of Yahwe.' That may seem a barren 
 and empty formula from the point of view of modern 
 individualism, but it is one of profound significance in 
 the thought of the Old Testament. It marks, indeed, 
 no outward distinction between the religion of Israel 
 and those of the neighbouring Semitic peoples, which 
 were all of the national type, and in each of which the 
 deity was conceived as personal. There was however a 
 vital difference in the fact that Yahwe was revealed to 
 Israel as a moral personality, whose character is reflected 
 in the demands of the conscience, and who is inexorable 
 in His requirement of a righteousness corresponding to 
 His own. The religion represented by the prophets is 
 one in which the God of the conscience enters into 
 personal relations not with the individual directly but 
 with the community : in other words the primary subject 
 or 'unit' of religion is the nation in whose history God 
 revealed Himself. To say this is not to deny that the 
 Old Testament contains anticipations of the perfect
 
 i] INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 relationship in which God speaks directly to the heart 
 of the individual believer; but it is none the less true 
 that to the saints of the old Covenant the foundation of 
 all religious confidence was Yahwe's faithful love for 
 the people of His choice. We shall have opportunity 
 later to examine this conception more closely in its 
 bearing on the work of the prophets I : in the meantime 
 it is sufficient to note that in this limitation of religion 
 to the national consciousness of Israel we can see a 
 reason for the existence of a special order of men through 
 whom God makes known His will to the nation at 
 large. We are thus led to inquire in what ways prophecy 
 provided a method of revelation adapted to the needs 
 of a religion national on one side and personal on 
 another; national in the sense that its primary subject 
 was a whole people, but personal inasmuch as the rela- 
 tions between this people and its God were relations of 
 an ethical and therefore personal kind. 
 
 The prophetic consciousness, as exhibited in the 
 great prophets of Israel, is a variety of the general 
 religious consciousness, involving like it an immediate 
 fellowship of the prophet with God; but both in the 
 sphere of its exercise and in the form of its experience 
 it presents several phenomena which do not belong to 
 the permanent essence of religion. There are perhaps 
 three chief features which differentiate the religious 
 experience of the prophets from the normal communion 
 of a Christian with God. 
 
 (i) The prophets are conscious of being intermediaries 
 between Yahwe and the nation of Israel. It is always as 
 representatives of Yahwe the national God of Israel 
 the God who had known that people alone of all the 
 families of the earth (Amos iii. 2) that they speak the 
 'word of Yahwe'; and the message they deliver in His 
 name is addressed not to themselves personally, nor to 
 1 See pp. 72 f., 2i6f.
 
 8 INTRODUCTORY [CH. 
 
 each Israelite individually, but to the nation in its cor- 
 porate capacity, conceived as an organic unity, and often 
 idealised as a moral person. ' Go, prophesy to my people 
 Israel' is the commission with which the Lord sum- 
 moned Amos from following the flock to announce His 
 purpose (Amos vii. 15); and that is the mandate under 
 which every prophet worked. In this way God spoke to 
 His people of old, revealing His purpose and character, 
 and conveying moral guidance, through the instru- 
 mentality of men called to His service and initiated into 
 His secret. On first thoughts this might seem to be 
 nothing different from what is observed in all religions, 
 viz. the spiritual leadership that naturally accrues to 
 men whose vision of divine truth is clearer than that of 
 their fellows. But that does not fully explain the peculiar 
 function of prophecy in the Old Testament. The 
 prophets are not merely the teachers and guides of a 
 nation; they are official exponents of a religion in which 
 the whole nation appears as the religious unit, expressing 
 its common religious attitude in the recognised func- 
 tions of national life. And if we reflect for a moment on 
 the method by which spiritual intercourse could be 
 maintained between a moral personality, such as Yahwe 
 was to the prophets, and a nation in its corporate life, 
 it is evident that the only possible channel of such 
 intercourse was a succession of men of God, conversant 
 with the purpose and character of Yahwe, standing as 
 mediators between Him and His people. We thus see 
 that from the fundamental constitution of the Old 
 Testament religion spiritual prophecy was an essential 
 institution for the development of the highest religious 
 life in Israel 1 . 
 
 1 See W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church 
 (1892), p. 291: 'That this spirit [of prophecy], in the Old Covenant, 
 rests only upon chosen organs of revelation, and not upon all the faithful, 
 corresponds to the limitations of the dispensation, in which the primary
 
 i] INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 (2) The prophets of Israel appear to have been en- 
 dowed with remarkable insight into the providential 
 significance of the political events of their time. Not 
 general truths of reason, nor facts of the spiritual life, 
 but the great movements of contemporary history, are 
 the writing in which they chiefly read the will and 
 purpose of the Almighty. Few things in prophecy are 
 more striking than the confidence with which it identi- 
 fies current events with the direct action of Yahwe, or 
 the certainty with which it reads their lesson and predicts 
 their issue. For us history, especially contemporary 
 history, is an inscrutable enigma; nothing is more pre- 
 carious than the attempt to interpret the divine meaning 
 of the history which unfolds itself before our eyes. 
 
 'God,' says Victor Hugo, 'makes visible to men his will in 
 events, an obscure text, written in a mysterious language. Men 
 make their translations of it forthwith; hasty translations, in- 
 correct, full of faults, omissions and misreadings. Very few minds 
 comprehend the divine tongue. The most sagacious, the most 
 calm, the most profound, decipher slowly; and, when they arrive 
 with their text, the need has long gone by: there are already 
 twenty translations in the public square.' 
 
 Nothing could be truer of the philosophical historian, 
 nothing less true of the prophet. Instead of being the 
 last to arrive with his translation, the prophet is first on 
 the spot; he is even beforehand with the event, and 
 discerns the mind of God not so much in what He has 
 done as in that which He is about to do. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss the origin or nature 
 of this endowment of the prophetic consciousness : how 
 
 subject of religion is not the individual but the nation, so that Israel's 
 personal converse with Jehovah can be adequately maintained, like 
 other national functions, through the medium of certain chosen and 
 representative persons. The prophet is thus a mediator, who not only 
 brings God's word to the people but conversely makes intercession for 
 the people with God.'
 
 io INTRODUCTORY [CH. 
 
 far it was a presentiment borne in on the mind of the 
 prophet by subtle perception of the secret forces that 
 shape the destiny of the world, and how far an inference 
 from general laws of the divine action 1 . It is sufficient 
 for our present purpose to call attention to the fact, and 
 to note its fitness as a vehicle of revelation on the level 
 of a national religion. History being to the nation what 
 experience is to the individual, it is only through His 
 providential ordering of history that God could express 
 His dealings with a nation, and only through the pro- 
 phetic interpretation of providence that His mind could 
 be truly known. That idea runs through the whole Old 
 Testament. The fundamental facts on which the religious 
 relation rests are the mighty deeds of Yahwe in redeem- 
 ing the people from Egypt, in securing it in the 
 possession of the land of Canaan, in defending it against 
 its foes, and crowning it with the temporal blessings in 
 which national well-being consists. In the pre-exilic 
 literary prophecy the dissolution of this gracious rela- 
 tionship, and the consequent destruction of the State, 
 are announced as a moral necessity brought about by 
 the persistent disobedience of Israel on the one hand 
 and the inflexible righteousness of Yahwe on the other. 
 But this startling message of doom is still an interpre- 
 tation of the divine purpose as about to be manifested 
 in an imminent crisis of history. 
 
 (3) The experience of the prophets contains a sub- 
 conscious element, appearing chiefly in the form of the 
 Vision, which is not characteristic of normal religious 
 life. The prophetic vision is undoubtedly a creation of 
 the sub-conscious mind, working uncontrolled by 
 voluntary reflexion, and producing subjective images 
 which have something of the vividness and reality of 
 actual sense perception. No one denies that such visions 
 
 1 See below, pp. 53, 75f.; and compare Giesebrecht, Die Berufs- 
 begabung der altte stamentlichen Propketen (1897), pp. 72-87.
 
 i] INTRODUCTORY n 
 
 were frequent on the lower levels of Hebrew prophecy : 
 ' If there be a prophet among you, in visions do I make 
 Myself known to him, in dreams do I speak with him' 
 (Num. xii. 6). The only question is whether or to what 
 extent they entered into the experience of the great 
 literary prophets, whose perception of religious truth 
 seems more akin to what we call intuition than to the 
 obscure psychological phenomena of the dream and the 
 vision. On that point there is room for difference of 
 opinion, and great difference exists. The recent tendency 
 of criticism has been on the whole to hold that the 
 visions recorded by the prophets were actually experi- 
 enced by them in a condition of comparative ecstasy, in 
 which self-consciousness was not lost, although its 
 control of the visionary process was suspended. But it 
 is held by some that this literal interpretation of the 
 descriptions given by the prophets is not justified : that 
 they are simply using the traditional form of prophetic 
 experience to express ideas which they had apprehended 
 otherwise, either by pure spiritual intuition or by the 
 exercise of their reasoning and reflective powers. Of 
 these opposing views the former alone seems to me to 
 be consistent with the directness and objectivity of the 
 prophets' narration. It must be borne in mind that 
 whatever we may think, the claim to have had a vision 
 was taken seriously in ancient times as a proof of 
 inspiration; so that for a prophet to profess to have had 
 a vision when he had not would have been to deceive 
 his public with regard to the validity of his commission 
 to declare the word of God. That in many cases we have 
 a conventional use of stereotyped prophetic phraseology 
 without any corresponding visionary experience is un- 
 doubtedly true; but the deliberate report of a vision, 
 especially a vision on which the prophet's whole title 
 to speak in the name of Yahwe depends, stands on a 
 different footing, and cannot be fairly explained as a
 
 12 INTRODUCTORY [CH. 
 
 conscious literary effort to express spiritual truth by the 
 aid of poetic imagination. 
 
 The objection usually urged against this explanation 
 of the visions that it reduces them to the same level 
 as the delusions of 'poor phrenetics' and connects the 
 deity with the irrational part of man's nature appears 
 to lose much of its force in the light of recent psycho- 
 logical research. The so-called irrational part of man's 
 nature has assumed a new importance under the name 
 of the ' sub-conscious ' ; and, uncertain as the ultimate 
 nature of the sub-conscious self may be, there are facts 
 enough to dispel the notion that everything of value in 
 the spiritual life of man must come by way of conscious 
 intellectual effort. It is a fact that under strong emotion 
 religious ideas and convictions do sometimes give rise 
 to visual or audible representations hardly distinguish- 
 able from sense impressions; and there is ample evidence 
 in Christian biography that this is compatible with 
 perfect sanity of mind and balance of judgment. Of this 
 nature we take the visions of the prophets to be. They 
 are purely subjective phenomena, taking place wholly 
 within the prophet's mind, and are projected from the 
 mind under the emotional stress which accompanies the 
 perception of a new spiritual truth or a fresh impression 
 of the reality of things divine. There seems no reason 
 why intuition should not initiate a process of this kind, 
 creating spontaneously the images in which the new 
 truth perceived finds its first expression. It is obvious 
 that there can be nothing absolutely new in the sensuous 
 material of which the vision is composed. It is only a 
 new synthesis of images supplied by previous waking 
 experience, each having its own aesthetic and emo- 
 tional value, which were stored in the memory of the 
 prophet: nevertheless (as we see most clearly from 
 Isaiah's inaugural vision in ch. vi) the effect of the 
 combination may be such as to produce an impression
 
 i] INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 of overwhelming novelty on the mind. And this is all 
 that is necessarily implied in the operation of sub- 
 conscious thought as it appears in the great prophets 
 of Israel. Whether, as Professor James taught, the sub- 
 consciousness be open to the direct influx of the divine 1 , 
 or whether (as other psychologists maintain) it is but 
 the lumber-room of the soul in which are stored im- 
 pressions that have slipped unobserved through the 
 portals of the active mind, makes no essential difference 
 so far as the form of the prophet's experience is con- 
 cerned. On either theory the revelation wells up from 
 the hidden depths of his being, and clothes itself in 
 symbols before his inner eye. 
 
 It cannot be maintained that this aspect of the 
 prophetic consciousness has any special adaptation to 
 the needs of a public religion of the national type, such 
 as the Old Testament religion was. There were many 
 other ways (especially the priestly oracle) in which the 
 will of Yahwe was made known to ancient Israel; and 
 again the ecstasy might be the vehicle of any conviction, 
 true or false, which took overmastering possession of 
 the prophet's mind. There is certainly no exclusive 
 connexion between national religion and ecstatic or 
 semi-ecstatic inspiration. At the same time we may 
 believe that in a more general way the vision and related 
 psychical phenomena were the necessary authentication 
 of the prophet's standing, both to himself and to the 
 people whom he addressed. It may have been, although 
 we have no right to affirm it positively, that in those 
 days no honest man would have ventured to speak in 
 the name of Yahwe without some express warrant in 
 his own experience that he had stood in the council of 
 the Lord. No doubt, the prophets' certainty of the truth 
 of their message rested ultimately on the self-evidencing 
 
 1 Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 242, 515-519.
 
 14 INTRODUCTORY [CH. 
 
 power of spiritual truth on minds morally sincere; but, 
 for the fundamental conviction that they belonged to 
 the circle of Yahwe's intimates, and had a commission 
 to declare His word, they may well have been dependent 
 on some striking event in their personal history, such 
 as the inaugural vision which several of them relate. 
 As for their public audience, the time had not yet come 
 when the messenger of God could rely on manifestation 
 of the truth to commend him to every man's conscience 
 in the sight of God (2 Cor. iv. 2). It is doubtful if the 
 prophets expected this, although some expressions 
 might seem to have that implication (Isa. xxix. 912, 
 etc.). In general they speak as men accredited by 
 definite experiences through which they have passed 
 to exhort and threaten and command in the name of 
 Yahwe the God of Israel. 
 
 These considerations do not completely explain the 
 unique position of prophecy in the religion of Israel; 
 but they are sufficient to show that there is a real corre- 
 spondence between the fundamental character of the 
 Old Dispensation and the salient features of the pro- 
 phetic consciousness as manifested in the leading repre- 
 sentatives of pre-exilic prophecy. The general conclusion 
 to which we are led is that the higher prophecy of the 
 Old Testament represents a transitional phase in the 
 development of religion from a nationalistic basis, on 
 which history is the chief medium of divine revelation, 
 to an individual and universal basis, on which God 
 enters into immediate fellowship with the human soul. 
 Why the perfect religion should have sprung from the 
 bosom of a national faith is a question on which it is 
 idle to speculate. But accepting the fact as we find it, 
 we can see that the final mission of prophecy was to 
 liberate the eternal truths of religion from their tem- 
 porary national embodiment, and disclose their true 
 foundation in the immutable character of God and the
 
 i] INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 essential nature of man. We shall see how this process 
 culminates in the person of Jeremiah. 
 
 It remains, therefore, to indicate in a few sentences 
 the place which Jeremiah occupies in this development. 
 That his life marks a climax and turning-point in the 
 history of prophecy is recognised by all recent students 
 of the religion of Israel, although different estimates 
 have been given of the qualities that distinguish him 
 from his predecessors. Ewald was perhaps the first to 
 characterise his genius in relation to the prophetic 
 movement as a whole; and his diagnosis is true and 
 illuminating so far as it goes. In the judgment of that 
 great critic, Jeremiah stands on the highest level of 
 prophetic achievement, where prophecy becomes con- 
 scious at once of its true essence and of its inherent 
 limitations, and reveals a failure of inward force which 
 points to its impending decline. This is seen chiefly in 
 the intrusion of personal emotion into the consciousness 
 of the prophet, which seemed to Ewald a symptom of 
 decay, and a sign that prophecy was no longer able to 
 cope with the degeneracy and confusion of the time, or 
 to guide and master the age as it had done in the strong 
 hands of Isaiah 1 . The merit of supplementing this 
 somewhat negative appreciation of Jeremiah is due 
 mainly to Wellhausen, who in a few incisive paragraphs 
 has emphasised the positive value of this prophet's 
 experience in a way that has profoundly influenced all 
 subsequent exposition. Accepting his view we find that 
 Jeremiah's specific greatness lies in the sphere of per- 
 sonal religion. The strongly marked emotionalism of 
 his temperament is not to be regarded as a weakness or 
 an impediment, but as the endowment of a spirit 
 touched to fine issues, and perhaps a necessary con- 
 dition of the heart to heart converse with God which 
 
 1 Die Propheten des alien Bundes, Band n (1868), 74, 71 f.
 
 1 6 INTRODUCTORY [CH. 
 
 unsealed within him the .perennial fount of true piety, 
 the religious susceptibility of the individual soul 1 . 
 His is the last word of the Old Testament on the 
 universal essence of religion; and we shall see how, in 
 speaking it, he breaks through the limitations of the 
 strictly prophetic consciousness, and moves out into 
 the larger filial communion with God in which every 
 child of man may share*. 
 
 Now this discovery of individual fellowship with God 
 which is Jeremiah's great contribution to the religious 
 experience of the Jewish Church is also the clue to his 
 own spiritual biography. The discovery came to him 
 through the stern discipline of his life, through long 
 travail of soul, and much contact with the world of men; 
 but it is the direction in which his life was guided from 
 the first by the spirit of God, and long before the goal 
 was consciously realised we catch glimpses of the steps 
 by which he was led into the secret of personal com- 
 munion with God. In the chapters which follow I have 
 sought to present the problems of Jeremiah's life from 
 this point of view. The selection of material is necessarily 
 incomplete, and may not be such as will commend 
 itself to all readers as the best that could be made. 
 There are important aspects of the work of Jeremiah 
 besides the central interest to which I have referred, 
 and I will not shun opportunities of dealing with them 
 as they come into view. But my main object is to trace 
 the growth of personal piety in the history of Jeremiah 
 and, following out the line of thought suggested by 
 these introductory observations, to elucidate the sig- 
 nificance of pre-exilic prophecy as seen through his 
 mind. 'The book of Jeremiah,' it has been said, 'does 
 not so much teach religious truths as present a religious 
 personality. Prophecy had already taught its truths, its 
 
 1 Israelituche undjudischc Geschichte, 5th Ed. (1904), pp. 147-1 50. 
 
 2 See below, pp. 215-222.
 
 i] INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 last effort was to reveal itself in a life 1 .' That life, like 
 every human life, has its incidents, its conflicts and 
 agonies, its heights and depths, its pathos and its 
 tragedy; and in all its varied experiences it is an 
 instructive and fascinating study. But through all its 
 merely human aspects we can see in it the efflorescence 
 of the spiritual principles which are the essence of the 
 prophetic movement in Israel 2 . 
 
 1 A. B. Davidson in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, n, 576. 
 See especially Chap, xi, below. 
 
 s P R.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 
 
 FEW travellers in Palestine, Sir George Adam Smith 
 tells us, ever turn aside from Jerusalem to visit the 
 little village of 'Anata, which lies about an hour's walk 
 to the north-east. Hidden from the city by intervening 
 ridges, it is visible from the north end of the range of 
 Olivet, and from that point it is described by a recent 
 traveller as a cluster of grey peasant houses, resting on 
 a sloping hillside, and surrounded by green fig-trees 
 and terraces of fruitful fields I . If this mean and insig- 
 nificant hamlet offers few attractions to the casual 
 tourist, to the student of Jeremiah there is, as Dr Smith 
 remarks 2 , no more instructive site. For 'Anata is of 
 course the ancient 'Anathoth, the birthplace of the 
 prophet, and his home till manhood. Its 'wild outlook' 
 northward over the 'stony fields of Benjamin' to the 
 mountains of Ephraim, eastward over a foreground of 
 rough barren hills to the Jordan valley and the heights 
 of Gilead beyond, gives the landscape on which his eyes 
 rested day by day during the impressionable years of 
 his youth, and many pages of his prophecy show how 
 deeply the features of that wide and varied prospect 
 
 1 Dr Hans Schmidt, Die grossen Propheten und ihre Zeit, p. 200; in 
 Die Schriften des alien Testaments in Auswahl...iibersetzt (1914). The 
 modern inhabitants are said (or were said some years ago) to be mostly 
 quarrymen and their families, supplying excellent building stone to 
 Jerusalem. It may have been the same in Jeremiah's time. Were stone- 
 masons from Anathoth among the workmen who were impressed for 
 the building of Jehoiakim's lordly palace, and afterwards defrauded of 
 their hire (xxii. 13 ff.)? 
 
 2 Jerusalem, 11, 228.
 
 CH. ii] PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 19 
 
 were stamped on his mind. It is significant also that in 
 the records of his life the circumstance is repeatedly 
 mentioned that Anathoth, though included in the king- 
 dom of Judah and so close to its capital, was in the 
 territory of Benjamin (i. I, xxxii. 8, xxxvii. 12). Ethno- 
 logically Benjamin belonged to Israel, and the fact 
 enables us to understand Jeremiah's undying affection 
 for the Rachel-tribes and his longing for the home- 
 bringing of their exiled children (iii. 12 f., xxxi. 46, 
 9, 15-20). 
 
 Under the monarchy Anathoth was the residence of 
 a famous priestly family, descended probably from that 
 unfortunate priest, Abiathar, who took the wrong side 
 at the accession of Solomon, and was 'rusticated' in 
 consequence to 'his own fields' at Anathoth (i Kings 
 ii. 26 f.). Abiathar was the sole survivor of the house 
 of Eli, and his degradation by Solomon involved the 
 permanent exclusion of his line from the service of the 
 central sanctuary at Jerusalem. When we read that 
 Jeremiah was 'the son of Hilkiah of the priests that 
 were in Anathoth,' the natural, though not absolutely 
 certain, inference is that he belonged to this line, thus 
 tracing his ancestry through the priesthood of Shiloh 
 back to the time of Moses and the beginning of Israel's 
 history as a nation. If this be correct there was no family 
 in Israel whose fortunes had been so closely bound up 
 with the national religion as that into which Jeremiah 
 was born. And nowhere would the best traditions and 
 the purest ethos of the religion of Yahwe be likely to 
 find a surer repository than in a household whose for- 
 bears had for so many generations guarded the most 
 sacred symbol of its imageless worship, the Ark of God. 
 
 The probable relation of such a family to the local 
 worship of Anathoth is a much more dubious subject 
 of speculation, but it raises questions of some import- 
 ance for the biography of Jeremiah. Can we suppose,
 
 20 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION [CH. 
 
 for instance, that his father Hilkiah was an officiating 
 priest at the rural shrine which must have been the 
 centre of the religious life of the village community x ? 
 Or are we to think of him as an adherent of the perse- 
 cuted prophetic party in the reign of Manasseh, the 
 party which had already set its mind on the suppression 
 of the provincial cults and the concentration of the 
 national worship in the Temple of Jerusalem*? We 
 cannot tell. Cornill decisively rejects the former view 
 as wholly incredible, mainly on the ground that 
 Jeremiah's deeply rooted and harmoniously developed 
 piety must have been the result of parental training, and 
 his horror of the popular cultus a sentiment which he 
 must have imbibed through the atmosphere of a devout 
 home. And it is perhaps not a very likely thing in itself 
 that the historic house of Abiathar should have sunk to 
 the level of those parochial Levite-priests whose living 
 depended on the maintenance of the high places: we 
 know in fact that the family possessed landed property 
 (xxxii. 6ff.). On the other hand, however, we have to 
 take account of the fact that in later years our prophet's 
 bitterest foes were they of his own household. His 
 brethren and his father's house were in full cry after 
 him (xii. 6) when the men of Anathoth sought his life 
 because he prophesied in the name of Yahwe. It is clear 
 therefore that Jeremiah's prophetic convictions were 
 not shared by the family to which he belonged; and it 
 is not improbable (as we shall see later) that on the 
 great practical issue of the time the law of the One 
 
 1 That Anathoth, in spite of its proximity to Jerusalem, had a sanc- 
 tuary of its own is probable, though it cannot be proved. Conspicuous 
 among the buildings of the modern l Anata is the white tomb of the local 
 Well, or patron saint under the Mohammedan regime (H. Schmidt, 
 /.c.). Considering the tenacity with which the tradition of sacred sites is 
 preserved in the East, we may suppose that this is the spot where the 
 'high place' stood in the days before Josiah's reformation. 
 
 a See below, Chap. YI.
 
 n] PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 21 
 
 Altar he and they were on opposite sides. If this were 
 the case Jeremiah's advocacy of the Deuteronomic re- 
 formation would naturally be resented by his brethren 
 as disloyalty to the family interest, and a surrender to 
 the pretensions of the rival house of Zadok, which 
 monopolised the priestly offices in the Temple. The 
 situation is too obscure to admit of positive conclusions, 
 but it is at least doubtful if the higher prophetic ideals 
 were an element in the religious education which 
 Hilkiah imparted to his children. It would not follow 
 that Jeremiah owed nothing to parental instruction or 
 family tradition. There were doubtless many good men 
 in Judah who while lamenting the abuses of the rural 
 sanctuaries nevertheless stood by the old order which 
 sanctioned a multiplicity of altars legitimately used in 
 the worship of Yahwe. Jeremiah's father might be one 
 of these. 
 
 We are on firmer ground when we speak of the direct 
 influence of prophecy on the opening mind of Jeremiah. 
 His familiarity with the ideas of the older prophets, 
 especially with those of Hosea, appears so soon after 
 his call, and that call came to him so early in life, that 
 we may safely assume that he had known the prophetic 
 writings and assimilated the principles of their teaching 
 before he had reached the age of manhood. In Hosea 
 he found not only a teacher, but a spirit kindred to his 
 own. Both were men of exceptionally tender and emo- 
 tional temperament, sympathising intensely with the 
 people on which they were constrained to pour out the 
 vials of divine judgment; possibly both were of priestly 
 descent, though neither attached the smallest value to 
 the ceremonial side of the priest's functions. There was 
 an ancestral bond between them inasmuch as Hosea 
 was a native of North Israel from which Jeremiah's 
 family had come, and in whose fate he shows so lively 
 an interest. It was from Hosea that the younger prophet
 
 22 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION [CH. 
 
 received the religious interpretation of Israel's history 
 which was the framework in which his own message 
 was to be set. What Hosea had learned through the 
 bitter experiences of his home life 1 led Jeremiah early 
 to renounce the hope of marriage, because he felt him- 
 self to be like his predecessor the prophet of a nation's 
 dying agony (ch. xvi. I ff.). They are the two martyr 
 prophets of the Old Testament, men of sorrows and 
 acquainted with grief, the most deeply exercised in 
 spiritual religion of all the prophets of Israel. 
 
 While his religious life was thus nourished from 
 within by contact with great minds of the past, nature 
 without was teaching him lessons which sank deep into 
 his young poetic soul. I have already referred in passing 
 to the impress which nature in her sterner aspect the 
 wild and desolate scenery on which his native Anathoth 
 looks down has left on his writings. But that is the 
 least part of the harvest which Jeremiah's quiet eye 
 must have gleaned in youth, not merely from permanent 
 features of the landscape but from the familiar pictures 
 of rural life and the ordinary interests and occupations 
 of men. An astonishing wealth of metaphor and imagery 
 gleams in his pages, embodying his profoundest thoughts 
 of God and man. In this, to be sure, there is nothing 
 peculiar to Jeremiah; for every prophet uses illustrations 
 from the outer world to set forth the truth he desires 
 to convey. Yet I think we may find in Jeremiah's poetry 
 traces of a closer sympathy with the life of nature than 
 in any other prophet. When, for example, he sees in 
 the marvellous instinct of the migratory birds an analogy 
 to the instinct of the human soul for God (viii. 7), he 
 gives expression to the most profound of spiritual truths 
 in a form which only the sympathetic contemplation of 
 nature could have suggested. Again, the striking picture 
 of the eternal snow of Lebanon as an emblem of the 
 
 1 See the first three chapters of his book.
 
 n] PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 23 
 
 unfailing source of Israel's true religion (xviii. 14) must 
 have originated in a mind responsive to 
 
 the silence and the calm 
 Of mute insensate things. 
 
 Such images are more than mere illustrations; they 
 seem to spring from a sense of a divine order immanent 
 in nature, not needing to be realised by a violent up- 
 heaval of the visible order, but manifesting itself to the 
 seeing eye in the constitution of the world as it exists 
 the living visible garment of the Eternal. This quality 
 of Jeremiah's poetic genius, more characteristic perhaps 
 of his later than of his youthful utterances, reveals 
 itself especially in the tendency of his eschatological 
 conceptions, which are entirely free from the catastrophic 
 element which elsewhere bulks so largely in prophetic 
 representations of the last days I . The vision of desola- 
 tion which frequently rose up before his mind is haunted 
 by an awful unearthly stillness a silence unbroken by 
 the lowing of cattle or the singing of birds (ix. 10, iv. 25). 
 Nor is it only the world of external nature that appeals 
 to Jeremiah: 'the still sad music of humanity' also has 
 its undying echo in his writings. Where can we find 
 an expression of it more simple and penetrating than 
 in the repeated lament over the quenching of all the 
 joys of common life in the coming days when 'the 
 sound of mirth and the sound of gladness, the voice of 
 the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound 
 of the millstones and the light of the lamp* shall be 
 taken away (xxv. 10; cf. vii. 34, xvi. 9, xxxiii. 1 1)? 
 
 One more element in Jeremiah's preparation for the 
 work of a prophet must be briefly mentioned. As the 
 time approached when he had to put away childish 
 things and enter on the responsibilities of manhood, he 
 must have become aware of the threatening aspect of 
 
 1 See below, pp. 286 f.
 
 24 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION [CH. 
 
 public affairs both abroad and at home. The date of 
 his call (c. 626 B.C.) coincides very nearly with the 
 death of Asshurbanipal, the last of the great Assyrian 
 monarchs. That event, although Jeremiah could not 
 have known it at the time, marked a crisis in the history 
 of Asia. Already there circulated in Judah the rumour 
 of ominous movements in the north which portended 
 the break up of the huge empire to which the little 
 Hebrew kingdom belonged. It was precisely the situa- 
 tion in which the God who doeth nothing without 
 revealing His secret to His servants the prophets (Amos 
 iii. 7) was wont to raise up a prophet in Israel. He had 
 done so recently in the person of Zephaniah, and now 
 His choice was to light on Jeremiah. In the internal 
 condition of the country also there was cause for anxiety 
 and foreboding. Since Jeremiah was a 'lad 1 ' at the 
 time of his call, we may place his birth approximately 
 in the year 645, towards the close of the long reign of 
 Manasseh. The religious policy of that king had been 
 dictated by subservience to Assyria, and involved the 
 adoption of Assyrian cults alongside of the worship of 
 Yahwe. The opposition of the prophetic party, which 
 stood for the pure and exclusive service of Yahwe had 
 been repressed with a ruthless severity which caused a 
 later generation to look back on this period as the time 
 when the doom of the nation was finally sealed (Jer. 
 xv. 4; 2 Kings xxi. n, 16, xxiii. 26, xxiv. 3, 4). At his 
 death in 638, coinciding as it did with the decline of the 
 
 1 na'ar (i. 6, 7). The word may of course denote any age from 
 infancy up to the verge of middle life. Commentators are mostly too 
 afraid of pressing the use of it here in the direction of extreme youth : he 
 must, they think, have been at least 2 5 years of age. To render it 'too 
 young,' in deference to the LXX, seems a needless deviation from the 
 plain sense of the Hebrew. Considering that Jeremiah was unmarried, 
 that his renunciation of married life was a consequence of his vocation 
 (rvi. i), and that early marriages are the rule among Orientals, it is 
 quite probable that he was under 20 when the call came to him.
 
 n] PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 25 
 
 Assyrian power, the smouldering discontent broke out 
 in the flames of party strife, and his son Amon was 
 assassinated after a reign of two years. Jeremiah was 
 old enough to remember this tragic incident, and the 
 accession of Josiah, a boy of his own age, in his eighth 
 year. A good deal has been written about the possible 
 relations between these two young men, growing up 
 within a few miles of one another, and each destined to 
 play an influential part in his country's history. But of 
 personal contact between them at any period of their 
 lives we have no hint whatsoever. We know that 
 Jeremiah had a sincere admiration for the character and 
 administration of his sovereign (xxii. 1 5 f.), although 
 he was more than critical of the great achievement with 
 which the name of Josiah is associated, the promulga- 
 tion and enforcement of the law of Deuteronomy 1 . 
 Meanwhile we simply note that the two men had reached 
 the threshold of manhood when Jeremiah passed through 
 the decisive experience that made him a prophet of God. 
 To that event in his history we will now turn our 
 attention. 
 
 The call of Jeremiah, as recorded in the first chapter 
 of the book, took the form of a dialogue between himself 
 and Yahwe, through which the consciousness of a life- 
 long vocation to the service of God was impressed on 
 his mind. In vv. 410 we read: 
 
 4 There came to me this word of Yahwe: 
 
 5 Before I formed thee in the womb I knew thee, 
 And before thou earnest forth I set thee apart; 
 A prophet to the nations I ordained thee. 
 
 6 And I said: 
 
 Ah, Lord Yahwe! 
 Behold I know not how to speak; 
 For I am but a lad. 
 
 1 See Chaps, vi, vn.
 
 26 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION [CH. 
 
 7 And Yah we said to me: 
 Say not thou art but a lad; 
 
 For to whomsoever I send thee thou shalt go, 
 And whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. 
 8 Have no fear before them, for I am with thee to succour thee: 
 
 'Tis an oracle of Yahwe. 
 9 Then Yahwe stretched forth His hand and laid it on my mouth, 
 
 and said : 
 
 Lo, I put My word in thy mouth: 
 10 See, I put thee in charge this day 
 
 Over the nations and over the kingdoms 
 To pluck up and to pull down, to build and to plant. 
 The first thing that calls for attention here is the 
 visionary form in which the fundamental experience is 
 cast; but having already said what is necessary on the 
 nature of the prophetic visions in general (pp. I o ff.), I will 
 only add that the narrative before us is to be explained 
 in the way there indicated. It is worthy of remark, 
 however, that the element of vision in the literal sense 
 is here very slight : the prophet is aware of the presence 
 of Yahwe and feels the touch of His hand upon his 
 mouth, but he does not say that he saw Him. We are 
 reminded of that 'consciousness of a Presence' which 
 Professor James has described as an 'imperfectly 
 developed hallucination,' and of which he cites examples 
 as occurring to persons of sound intellect in full posses- 
 sion of their waking senses z . On the other hand what is 
 sometimes called audition is very prominent : the word of 
 Yahwe comes to the prophet as an audible external voice. 
 It is instructive from several points of view to 
 compare this inaugural experience of Jeremiah with that 
 of his great predecessor Isaiah. To Isaiah the Lord 
 appeared arrayed in awful splendour and majesty, 
 seated on a high and lofty throne, unapproachable, so 
 that the mortal eye could not gaze on His countenance; 
 1 Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 58-63.
 
 nj PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 27 
 
 and the consecrating touch on his lips is given by a 
 ministering seraph. But God meets with Jeremiah on 
 life's common way, standing by his side, and Himself 
 laying His hand on his mouth. His presence inspires no 
 terror or crushing sense of personal guilt, but only a 
 natural shrinking from the greatness of the task allotted 
 to him; a striking contrast both to the 'Woe is me!' 
 of Isaiah, and his eager 'Here am I.' We cannot but 
 feel that though this may have been Jeremiah's first 
 vision of Yahwe it was not the beginning of his fellow- 
 ship with Him. It is the consummation of a genuine 
 religious experience, rooted probably in the pieties of 
 home and early life, of a growing self-knowledge and 
 knowledge of God, which now ripens into the conscious- 
 ness of a special mission. 
 
 Accordingly, of the impressions made on Jeremiah 
 at this time the first and fundamental one is just the 
 sense of personal predestination to the prophetic office ; 
 he realises not merely that he is called to be a prophet 
 now, but that he has been destined and fashioned for 
 this calling from his birth. The idea of individual pre- 
 destination to a great work is not new in the Old 
 Testament (Jud. xiii. 5), but it acquires a peculiar 
 significance in the mind of a prophet. It is not of course 
 a truth suddenly injected into the mind from without 
 no such process is conceivable but a conviction formed 
 within, an intuitive perception of the divine ideal and 
 meaning of his existence, of his true place in the divine 
 order of the world, of the work for which he is ' cut out ' in 
 the service of God and of His kingdom. In all the higher 
 callings of life there are such moments of self-discovery as 
 are described in the well-known lines of Wordsworth: 
 
 I made no vows, but vows 
 Were then made for me; bond unknown to me 
 Was given that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
 A dedicated spirit;
 
 28 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION [CH. 
 
 moments when the soul yields itself to the guidance of 
 a power higher than its own, when latent capacities of 
 the mind bestir themselves, and far-reaching resolves 
 are made which contain the germ of the best that the 
 man will ever be or achieve. The call of a prophet was 
 this, but it was something more. It was an act not of 
 self-discovery merely, but of self-surrender to a personal 
 Being, who knows even before He is known, and 
 chooses His servants before they choose Him. The 
 sense of predestination in Jeremiah's consciousness 
 means the conviction that the endowments of his whole 
 nature, his physical and moral environment, all the 
 influences of heredity and education that had shaped 
 his life and made him what he was, had worked together 
 under the hand of God to prepare him for the task to 
 which he is now summoned. He is not to be a mere 
 mouthpiece of the word of Yahwe, but a chosen vessel, 
 fitted in every part of his being to be the medium of 
 revelation to his fellow men. 
 
 There is, however, another element in Jeremiah's 
 initiation which is at first sight surprising, and difficult 
 to understand. He felt himself called to be a ' prophet 
 to the nations? How, it might be asked, could a young 
 inexperienced individual, unversed in public affairs, 
 have been led to think of himself thus early as presiding 
 over the destinies of powerful empires and great nations ? 
 Was it not enough to be a prophet to Israel; and was 
 not his ministry as a matter of fact practically confined 
 to his own people ? None of his predecessors, so far as 
 we know, had entertained so exalted an idea of his 
 mission. Both Amos and Isaiah had uttered oracles 
 against foreign nations, and Isaiah had predicted the 
 overthrow of the mightiest empire on earth. Yet to 
 Amos the charge had been simply ' Go, prophesy to my 
 people Israel,' and to Isaiah 'Go, speak to this people.' 
 While Hosea, with whom Jeremiah's affinities are
 
 ii] PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 29 
 
 closest, had said nothing about the fate of any foreign 
 people at all. Is it credible that Jeremiah, the most 
 diffident and sensitive of prophets, entered on his public 
 work with this amazing consciousness of the world-wide 
 scope of his commission ? Or must we conclude with 
 Duhm that this feature of the call stamps the whole 
 narrative as apocryphal, and that it was only the imagina- 
 tion of later Judaism which transformed the modest 
 young priest of Anathoth into the colossal figure who 
 pulls down and builds up nations and kingdoms, and 
 pours out vials of wrath on the whole world I ? 
 
 Now Duhm suggests a partial answer to his own 
 objections when he points out that a tendency to ascribe 
 to the prophets of Israel a commanding influence over 
 the destinies of foreign states appears already in the 
 popular biographies of Elijah and Elisha preserved in 
 the book of Kings. And that the idea was not strange 
 to Jeremiah's later thinking is seen from the words he 
 addressed to an opponent many years afterwards : ' The 
 prophets that were before me and thee from old time 
 prophesied against many lands and against great king- 
 doms, of war...' (ch. xxviii. 8), a passage, by the way, 
 whose authenticity Duhm is at pains to affirm. It would 
 seem, therefore, that the issue is narrowed down to 
 this : whether this conception of the prophetic office is 
 one that could have presented itself to Jeremiah at the 
 moment of his call. I see no reason why it should not. 
 We ought to be very chary of imposing limitations to 
 the insight into his own future which may come to a 
 prophet or man of genius in his first vision of the course 
 his life is to take. And if the current estimate of prophecy 
 
 1 It has of course been suggested that the passage expresses a con- 
 ception of his office which Jeremiah arrived at much later in his career 
 (see ch. xxv. 1 5 ff.). A few critics have thought to get rid of the 
 difficulty by a slight but utterly unacceptable alteration of the text, 
 reading 'my nation' instead of 'the nations.'
 
 30 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION [CH. 
 
 already included a certain cosmopolitan sphere of in- 
 fluence, it is surely conceivable that as soon as Jeremiah 
 knew his place in that goodly fellowship, his thoughts 
 rose instinctively to the height of his calling, and he 
 saw himself put in charge over the nations as the 
 accredited representative of Yahwe the God of hosts. 
 
 But the real significance of this aspect of the prophet's 
 consciousness appears more clearly from another point 
 of view. The truth is that the political situation had so 
 changed since the dawn of written prophecy that there 
 was no more room for a merely national prophecy in 
 Israel than for a merely national deity in its religion. 
 Judah was at this time, and had been for more than a 
 century, a dependency of the Assyrian empire. It be- 
 longed to an international system so interlocked that 
 the fate of one small kingdom involved the fate of many 
 other States small and great. Moreover, there were 
 ominous signs of a vast impending convulsion which 
 threatened the dissolution of the entire political fabric 
 on which civilisation rested. It was no longer possible 
 that such a judgment as the prophets had foretold could 
 descend on Judah without a general upheaval in which 
 some powers would go down and others be built up. 
 And the true prophet is one who from his watch-tower 
 gives forth the word that rules the storm the word of 
 the Lord, whose secret is revealed to His servant. 
 
 We may here pass at once to consider the import of 
 the two supplementary visions in which these ideas 
 receive a more precise determination the vision of 
 the almond-branch and of the heated cauldron in w. 
 1114. I assume that these belong to the cycle of 
 Jeremiah's initiatory experiences; although the fact that 
 each has a separate introductory formula shows that 
 they are not a part of the original ecstasy, and leaves 
 open the possibility that they date from later periods of 
 his life. These visions have a peculiar psychological
 
 n] PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 31 
 
 interest. They seem to be instances of a phenomenon 
 not uncommon in prophecy, viz. the blending of actual 
 sense impressions with subjective ideas in such a way 
 that the seer himself is unable to distinguish the two. 
 The almond-twig and the boiling pot are, I take it, not 
 hallucinations, like Macbeth's dagger, but real objects 
 of vision which thrust themselves into the prophet's 
 cogitations, and become invested with a mystic signifi- 
 cance which expresses itself in an oracular utterance, 
 probably of the nature of an audition. 
 
 Thus, it is midwinter, when all nature is asleep, and 
 Jeremiah's attention is arrested by a solitary almond- 
 branch bursting into flower. The almond, which blos- 
 soms in January, was poetically named by the Hebrews 
 the wakeful tree, as the first of all the trees to wake up 
 at the touch and promise of spring. Looking at it, the 
 prophet is impelled to pronounce its name: Shdked^ 
 4 awake.' What does it signify? The answer comes 
 unbidden: 'I am wakeful (Shoked} over My word to 
 fulfil it.' 
 
 Again, in a moment of rapt meditation, his gaze 
 rests on a pot boiling on the domestic hearth; and he 
 seems to notice what he would scarcely have noticed 
 if his mind had not been preoccupied with the idea 
 that its mouth is turned away from the north. The 
 meaning here lies in two words: 'blown' ('a pot blown 
 upon'; i.e. fiercely heated by a blast of wind), and 
 * north ' ; and they come together in the following oracle : 
 
 From the north shall the evil be blown 
 On all that inhabit the earth. 
 
 If I have rightly interpreted the symbolism, we have 
 here the image of a magic cauldron brewing in the 
 mysterious north, and sending forth deadly fumes 
 which will carry ruin and desolation over the world 
 an emblem of the sense of calamity which already
 
 32 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION [CH. 
 
 haunted Jeremiah's mind, and was to find impassioned 
 expression in his earliest poetic effusions 1 . 
 
 It is tempting to read into these two visions a fine 
 contrast between the silent upbuilding forces of life and 
 renewal which work slowly and unceasingly for the 
 advancement of mankind, and the destructive agencies 
 which sweep through the world from time to time work- 
 ing out the divine purpose in judgment. That, however, 
 goes beyond the true meaning of the passage. The two 
 images are disparate: one expresses a general principle 
 of prophecy; the other deals with a particular concrete 
 application. The word over which Yahwe is wakeful is 
 the word of threatening as well as the word of promise 
 and hope. On the second vision we need not linger now, 
 because it will occupy our attention fully in the next 
 chapter. But on the first one observation may be made. 
 In early Israel, and even in written prophecy we find 
 occasional traces of a crude conception of the word of 
 God as endowed with an inherent, almost magical, 
 efficacy, in virtue of which it works out its own fulfil- 
 ment. Traces of that idea occur even in the discourses 
 of Jeremiah; but this vision seems to teach that in 
 principle he had risen above it. The assurance that the 
 word which he will speak in the name of Yahwe will 
 not return to Him void rests on no belief in its self- 
 fulfilling energy, but on the wakefulness of Yahwe 
 the ever-active, living, personal presence of One who 
 knows the end from the beginning. 
 
 1 Some technical difficulties of this exposition have caused Duhm 
 and others to adopt an entirely different construction of the omen. 
 
 Reading "OSD for ^3/,he renders the clause 'with its front (lit. "face") 
 : T : 
 
 turned towards the north' ; and since a pot has no ' face ' ( !), he takes this 
 to mean that the front of the fireplace was on its northward side, and 
 was fanned by a blast coming from that quarter. This reading creates 
 more difficulties than it solves, and yields a somewhat confused inter- 
 pretation of the symbol. In v. 14 it is necessary to read with the LXX 
 PlBfi 'shall be blown' for the Hebrew HHSn 'shall be opened.'
 
 n] PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION 33 
 
 We may now sum up the impressions which this 
 whole narrative conveys of our prophet's character and 
 individuality. Jeremiah comes before us here in the 
 freshness of his youth, modest and shrinking from 
 publicity, and as one whose days have been ' bound each 
 to each by natural piety.' He knows already something 
 of what it means to be a prophet, and is familiar with 
 the writings and thoughts of Hosea. He is awaking to 
 the consciousness that the times call for another such 
 voice to bring men to a sense of realities. A foreboding 
 of coming doom, a conviction that all is not well between 
 Israel and Yahwe, has taken possession of him and cut 
 him off from the innocent gaieties and pleasures of 
 youth. He is subject to moods of visionary abstraction, 
 in which spiritual things take bodily shape before the 
 inner eye. In one such hour the call of God comes to 
 him with irresistible power; and after a momentary 
 hesitation he yields to its constraint, and is filled with 
 a new inflexible courage which makes him as a wall of 
 brass against all the assaults of an unbelieving world. 
 
 In all this we have already an indication of the course 
 which his religious development was to follow. The con- 
 viction that he was predestined to be a prophet in itself 
 suggests the consciousness of a broader and more human 
 relation to God than is involved in the call to a special 
 work; and the suggestion is confirmed by his peculiar 
 response to the divine summons. It is as if the sense of 
 vocation appealed only to one side of his nature; there 
 is another side which cries out in protest against it. A 
 personality chosen and moulded from the beginning 
 for the high calling of a prophet: that is Yahwe's 
 estimate of His servant's capacity; and in recognising 
 that it is God's Jeremiah confesses that in the depth of 
 his heart he feels it to be true. But he has his own 
 private estimate of his powers which will not be sup- 
 pressed, and he exclaims that he is not fit for this task, 
 
 S.P.R. I
 
 34 PREDESTINATION AND VOCATION [CH. n 
 
 at least he is not fit for it yet. 'Alas, Lord Yahwe! I 
 cannot speak; I am but a lad.' It is not a rejection of 
 the heavenly vision, but a sincere plea for delay, as if 
 he had said, May I not wait till I can speak with the 
 wisdom and authority that come with years? But the 
 call is inexorable; and Jeremiah's misgivings are over- 
 come by the assurance that the message he is to deliver 
 and the strength to utter it are not his own but the 
 word and power of the Almighty. 
 
 Now this incident foreshadows the internal tragedy 
 of Jeremiah's career. The conflict was past for the time; 
 the victory of conscience over inclination, of the spirit 
 over the flesh, of the higher self over the lower, was in 
 principle won. But the brief struggle was the prelude 
 to many others which beset the prophet through life. 
 Again and again he was to experience the opposition 
 between the natural impulses and affections of his 
 human heart and the imperative mandate of the divine 
 word. Of that protracted inward agony there are many 
 poignant expressions in Jeremiah's later poems, and in 
 these we shall find the key to the significance of his 
 personality as the first great exponent of individual and 
 universal religion.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE NORTHERN PERIL 
 
 ^ II ^HE vision of the 'seething cauldron' in ch. i. 13 f., 
 JL which we have already considered, speedily re- 
 ceived its historical interpretation in some of Jeremiah's 
 earliest oracles. The fourth chapter of the book contains 
 a selection of short poetic effusions, describing the 
 successive stages of a great wave of barbaric invasion 
 sweeping down from the north, spreading havoc and 
 desolation over the whole civilised world, and discharg- 
 ing Yahwe's wrath against His people. We have now 
 to examine the contents of these poems in the light of 
 the circumstances under which they were composed. 
 A rough translation of the outstanding passages (pre- 
 serving as far as possible the rhythm of the original) 
 will convey better than any summary an idea of the 
 prophet's state of mind in face of this appalling visita- 
 tion. 
 
 The Watchman's Cry (vv. 5^-8) 
 S^Let the trumpet be blown in the land; 
 
 Loud be your call: 
 ' Assemble and let us escape 
 
 To the cities with walls.' 
 
 6 Hoist ye the signal for Zion ! 
 
 No time for delay ! 
 For danger comes out of the North, 
 And Havoc untold. 
 
 7 A lion is roused from his lair, 
 
 A Spoiler of nations; 
 
 He is started, gone forth from his haunts 
 To harry the earth. 
 
 32
 
 36 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. 
 
 8 Gird you with sackcloth for this; 
 
 Lament and wail; 
 For Yahwe's hot anger lies on us, 
 And turns not away. 
 
 The gathering storm (vv. 13, 14) 
 X 3 Behold, like clouds he comes up, 
 
 His chariots a stormwind ! 
 Swifter than vultures his horses; 
 Woe to us! We're undone. 
 
 J 4O Jerusalem, wash thee from sin 
 
 If thou would'st be saved: 
 How long shall lodge in thy heart 
 Thy dissolute thoughts? 
 
 The approaching Foe (vv. 1517) 
 *5Hark! a runner from Dan! 
 
 A Herald of Evil from Ephraim's hills : 
 16 Warn the people: Behold they come! 
 
 Let Jerusalem hear ! 
 
 From a far land leopards are coming, 
 
 Against Judah's townships they roar; 
 J 7Like sleepless field-watchers they prowl around (?). 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The Prophet's Anguish (vv. 1 9-2 1 ) 
 J 9My bowels, my bowels! O my pain! 
 
 walls of my heart ! 
 My soul is in tumult within; 
 
 1 cannot keep still, 
 
 For the trumpet's din in my ears, 
 The alarum of war. 
 
 20 Crash upon crash it comes 
 
 The ruin of all the land. 
 Of a sudden my tent is ruined, 
 In an instant my curtains. 
 
 21 How long must I see the signal? 
 
 The blaring trumpet hear?
 
 in] THE NORTHERN PERIL 37 
 
 A Piston of Chaos (w. 2326) 
 
 2 3l looked to the earth and behold a chaos! 
 
 To the heavens and their light was gone. 
 2 4 1 looked to the hills and lo, they quivered, 
 
 And all the mountains shook. 
 2 5 1 looked and behold, no man was there, 
 
 And all the birds of heaven were flown. 
 26 1 looked to the cornland and lo, a desert, 
 
 And all its cities were razed away. 
 
 The Panic of the Invasion (v. 29) 
 
 From the noise of horsemen and bowmen 
 
 All the land is in flight: 
 They crawl into caverns, hide in the thickets 1 , 
 
 And scale the crags. 
 Every town is deserted, 
 
 None dwell therein. 
 
 Zion in her Agony (vv. 30, 31) 
 
 3 And thou, spoiled one, what doest thou 
 
 Dressing in scarlet, 
 Flaunting in trinkets of gold, 
 
 And enlarging thine eyes with paint? 
 In vain thine adorning! The lewd lovers scorn thee, 
 They seek thy life. 
 
 3i Hark! A shriek like a travailing woman's 
 
 With her first child! 
 'Tis the voice of the daughter of Zion, gasping, 
 
 Stretching her hands, (and crying) 
 'Woe is me! For my soul faints away 
 At the feet of the slayers.' 
 
 Although these poems must have been composed at 
 intervals, and under many fluctuations of feeling, they 
 seem to have been carefully selected and artistically 
 
 * Reading with Erbt, after the LXX: 0^2 
 

 
 38 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. 
 
 arranged so as to form a complete cycle, beginning 
 with the first warning blast of the trumpet, and reaching 
 an overpowering climax in the death-shriek of the 
 doomed capital, with which the chapter closes. There 
 might be no great difficulty in supposing that the 
 selection was the work of Jeremiah himself; but more 
 probably it was made by an editor, who has supplied 
 introductory formulae and connecting links (5 a, 9, 
 ii a, 1 8) and added certain passages which may be of 
 later date (10, 22, 27, 28). That it is only a selection 
 appears from the fact that there are several isolated 
 poems of precisely the same character and undoubtedly 
 belonging to the same time, scattered over the succeed- 
 ing chapters 1 . Those just rendered, however, supply 
 ample material for a consideration of the phase of 
 Jeremiah's experience with which we are now con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Our first task is to ascertain how these obviously 
 idealised descriptions are related to actual facts of his- 
 tory. 'Prophecies,' says Dr Davidson, are usually 'sug- 
 gested by some great movement among the nations, in 
 which Jehovah's presence is already felt 2 .' The prophet's 
 mind is the seismograph of providence, vibrating to the 
 first faint tremors that herald the coming earthquake. 
 Is this principle verified in the case of Jeremiah ? and 
 if so, to what great movement of peoples can we trace 
 the presentiment embodied in the vision of the seething 
 cauldron, and becoming articulate in the poems before 
 us? 
 
 The opening of Jeremiah's ministry, we have seen, 
 coincides approximately with the death of Asshurbani- 
 pal, and therefore with the two earliest attacks of the 
 
 1 v. 6 (?), 15-17; vi. 1-5 (6, 7?), 22-26; and, according to some, 
 viii. 14 ff., and x. 1922. 
 
 * NaAum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah (in Cambridge Bible for Schools), 
 p. 14; cf. p. 98.
 
 in] THE NORTHERN PERIL 39 
 
 Medes on Nineveh, first under Phraortes and then, 
 shortly afterwards, under his son Cyaxares. Now there 
 is a passage of Herodotus which connects the second 
 of these Median attacks directly with one of those 
 periodic irruptions of northern barbarians which so 
 often deflected the course of ancient history. We read 
 that the Medes had already defeated the Assyrians, and 
 were on the point of capturing Nineveh, when they 
 were routed and driven off by a great host of Scythians, 
 under Madyes, the son of Protothyes, which had come 
 from southern Europe, pursuing the Cimmerians along 
 the north shore of the Euxine, and entering Asia round 
 the east end of the Caucasus. Thereafter the Scythians 
 made a raid towards Egypt, but when they reached the 
 frontier they were induced by the bribes and prayers of 
 Psammetichus to retrace their steps. For 28 years they 
 are said to have lorded it over 'all Asia,' turning things 
 upside down by extortion, rapine and massacre. At 
 last the Medes got rid of them by a treacherous 
 stratagem; and then Cyaxares conquered Nineveh and 
 put an end to the Assyrian empire. In these events, 
 especially the Scythian incursion into Palestine, most 
 critics and historians since Eichhorn have found the 
 suggestion and background of Jeremiah's prophecies 
 of the Foe from the North; and no other theory gives so 
 adequate an explanation of the foreboding with which 
 he entered upon his work. Unfortunately, the vague 
 and misleading statements of Herodotus, and his in- 
 accurate chronology, leave many points obscure; and 
 there is still a difficulty in determining how far Jere- 
 miah's anticipations were influenced or coloured by 
 contemporary historical events. 
 
 If we had only the narrative of Herodotus to guide 
 us, it would be natural to suppose that the movement 
 which awoke the prophetic impulse in Jeremiah (and 
 also, we may add, in his older contemporary Zephaniah)
 
 40 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. 
 
 was the first appearance of Scythian and Cimmerian 
 nomads in Asia; and that these two prophets had a 
 prevision of the menace that lurked in the teeming 
 populations beyond the Caucasus and the Black Sea. 
 But the Assyrian evidence puts that attractive specula- 
 tion out of court. The Scythians who relieved Nineveh 
 had been settled on the outskirts of the empire for a 
 century before the death of Asshurbanipal, and had a 
 standing alliance with the Assyrians against the Medes 
 to the east of them and the Cimmerians to the west. 
 Their presence, therefore, must have been known in 
 Palestine when Jeremiah wrote. On the other hand the 
 Scythian raid on Palestine, for which Herodotus is the 
 sole authority, may well have followed the relief of 
 Nineveh about 626; and if we suppose that it took 
 place shortly after that event, it would nearly syn- 
 chronise with the opening of Jeremiah's ministry. There 
 is thus a good deal to be said for the conjecture that 
 this particular episode of the Scythian invasion was the 
 'movement among the nations' in which he discerned 
 the signs of coming judgment 1 . 
 
 1 See Herodotus i, 1037; iv, i. The SKV&U of Herodotus are 
 identified by Assyriologists with the Ashguza of the monuments, who as 
 early as the reign of Sargon (72205), already occupied the district 
 round Lake Urumia, having the Cimmerians to the west of them round 
 Lake Van. Under Esarhaddon (681-68) their king Bartatua (evidently 
 the n.p<aro8vr)<s of Herodotus) sought an alliance with Assyria by offering 
 his daughter in marriage to Esarhaddon. It would seem that the his- 
 torical perspective is greatly foreshortened in the narrative of Herodotus. 
 He writes as if the Scythians had reached Assyrian territory from 
 Europe just in time to beat off the Medes from Nineveh. Whether that 
 be the course actually followed by the invasion at a much earlier time, 
 or whether Herodotus knew of some more recent migration, is immaterial 
 to our inquiry. The facts seem to be established that the Ashguza- 
 Scythians were allies of the Assyrians, and that their intervention at the 
 crisis of Nineveh's fate was due to this long-standing alliance. See 
 Winckler in Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament, p. 100 ff. It is 
 difficult to know what to make of the obviously exaggerated statement
 
 m] THE NORTHERN PERIL 41 
 
 So far, then, as we can now read the signs of the 
 times from Jeremiah's point of view, there were three 
 elements in the external situation likely to impress the 
 mind of a prophet. There was first the known existence 
 of a new group of formidable warlike peoples Medes, 
 Scythians, Cimmerians on the northern frontiers of 
 civilisation. Next there was the threatened collapse of 
 the Assyrian empire under the pressure of these vigorous 
 races, which meant the dissolution of the whole estab- 
 lished system of international relations. Lastly there 
 was the dread of an invasion by these barbarians, an 
 invasion whose imagined horrors surpassed all previous 
 experience. How these vague impressions were com- 
 bined in the mind of the prophet, and in what order 
 they emerged into consciousness, it is of course im- 
 possible to discover. We may surmise that at the time 
 of his call he had already gathered from rumours that 
 had reached Palestine a conception of the general char- 
 acter and appearance of the northern peoples their 
 language, their method of warfare, their predatory 
 habit, and so forth and that he also foresaw that the 
 empire of Assyria would succumb to their persistent 
 assaults. In these distant troubles that disturbed the 
 north he may even then have discerned the portents of 
 a great political catastrophe, which was to be Yahwe's 
 judgment on the whole earth. At a somewhat later time, 
 
 that the Scythians ruled all Asia for 28 years between the first (c. 626) 
 and the second (606) assault of Cyaxares on Nineveh. It is quite possible 
 that during that interval they were formidable disturbers of the peace 
 of Asia; and they may have 'ruled' it by predatory excursions; but as 
 an imperial power they cannot have played any part. Lastly, the ex- 
 pedition against Egypt is mentioned by no other authority, and cannot 
 be certainly dated. The silence of the Hebrew historians with regard to 
 any such incident is remarkable; but it does not necessarily discredit 
 the testimony of Herodotus. There is no difficulty in assuming that it 
 happened about the time when Jeremiah was composing his 'Scythian' 
 poems.
 
 42 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. 
 
 when the dreaded invasion became an imminent danger, 
 his foreboding may have found utterance in the * Scyth- 
 ian poems' now before us. 
 
 That Jeremiah's descriptions of the unnamed foe 
 agree in the main with what we know of the Scythians 
 and their kinsfolk of later ages the Gauls, Goths and 
 Vandals is hardly open to dispute. Exception is taken 
 to one or two details, such as the mention of chariots 
 in iv. 13, and of siege-operations in vi. 3 f., both of 
 which are thought to be inconsistent with Scythian 
 methods of warfare; but these points are too insignificant 
 to neutralise the general impression conveyed by the 
 poems. A wild, primeval, hyperborean race, of uncouth 
 speech, cruel and pitiless, moving on horseback, armed 
 with bow and spear, sweeping like a tornado over the 
 land and leaving desolation in their track, prowling like 
 hungry wolves or howling leopards round the fenced 
 cities where the terrified inhabitants have taken refuge * 
 such is the picture presented in this series of lyrics; 
 and it corresponds with the conception one must form 
 of the character of a Scythian invasion. The correspond- 
 ence may not be so exact as to exclude absolutely the 
 alternative hypothesis to which some still adhere: viz. 
 that from the first the prophet had in view the Chal- 
 deans, who were the actual instruments of Judah's 
 destruction. But the Chaldeans did not appear in the 
 north of Syria until 20 years after the call of Jeremiah, 
 and it would be contrary to the analogy of prophecy to 
 suppose that a power which had not yet risen on the 
 horizon should convey the first suggestion of Yahwe's 
 final intervention 3 . 
 
 1 Ch. iv. 5 ff. passim-, v. 6, 15-19; vi. 1-5, 6, 22-26. 
 
 2 A careful review of the evidence is given by F. Wilke, who comes 
 to the conclusion that the narrative in Herodotus is entirely destitute of 
 historical foundation, and that the poems refer to the Chaldean invasion 
 under Nebuchadnezzar (Alttestamentlichc Sttidien R. Kittel zum 60
 
 
 in] THE NORTHERN PERIL 43 
 
 Now if a Scythian raid in sufficient force to have 
 extorted gifts and prayers from the king of Egypt really 
 took place, the danger to Judah must have been very 
 great. It is usually held that little or no actual damage 
 was done within Jewish territory. The marauders are 
 supposed to have swept past along the coast route and 
 to have returned on their track, leaving the hill country 
 of Judah unmolested. That opinion may be entirely 
 correct. It is consistent with the brief account of Hero- 
 dotus, who only records the plunder of the temple of 
 Aphrodite at Ashkelon by some stragglers from the 
 main body during the retreat; and what is more im- 
 portant it would account for the silence of Old Testament 
 writers on the episode. The matter is not altogether 
 disposed of by these considerations, and a few scholars 
 have put forward the theory of a more or less protracted 
 occupation of Palestine by the Scythians, under which 
 
 Geburtstag dargebrac At, 1913, pp. 222 ff.). The objection stated above 
 seems to me decisive so long as we accept the common view that the 
 poems belong to the youthful period of Jeremiah's work. Winckler, 
 abandoning this position, dates the beginning of Jeremiah's prophecy 
 from about 61 o onwards, and thinks the dating of his call in the thirteenth 
 year of Josiah was a device of the redactors to make him out to be a fore- 
 runner of the Deuteronomic reformation (Geschichte Israels, i, pp. 1 1 2 f.). 
 That would no doubt make a reference to the Chaldeans plausible; but 
 the suggestion is arbitrary and uncalled for. There is a difference between 
 these passionate and explosive utterances and the later discourses of 
 Jeremiah which is best explained by the difference between youth and 
 age, and points to a considerable interval having elapsed since the 
 'Scythian' poems were composed. It is true, however, that they were 
 first published about 604, when a Babylonian invasion from northern 
 Syria was threatened; and Jeremiah did then recognise in the new 
 enemy the fulfilment of his early and unshaken presentiment of danger 
 looming in the north. It is therefore possible, though the assumption 
 seems scarcely necessary, that he modified the details of the picture in 
 order to bring it into closer agreement with his altered outlook. On the 
 whole it is a fortunate circumstance that Herodotus has preserved the 
 notice of an incident which seems to throw so much light on Jeremiah's 
 biography as this otherwise unrecorded Scythian invasion.
 
 44 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. 
 
 the kingdom of Judah suffered severely 1 . The question 
 is of some interest for the understanding of Jeremiah's 
 prophecies. If there be any truth in the view just men- 
 tioned, the realistic element in the poems before us may 
 be greater than is generally allowed. It is impossible in 
 poetry to distinguish sharply between realism and 
 imagination; and that imagination plays a large part in 
 these poems is of course beyond doubt. Yet as we read 
 these graphic pictures of the consternation and flight 
 of the people, the arrival of messengers in hot haste 
 from the north, the crowding of the rural population 
 into fortified towns, the cutting off of stragglers in the 
 open country, the meditated assault on the capital, it is 
 difficult to suppose that it is all a creation of pure poetic 
 fancy following out the conception of an invasion which 
 was imaginary from first to last. When Jeremiah, for 
 example, warns the country people to seek safety in 
 walled towns and raise the signal for flight to Zion 
 (iv. 5 f.), and afterwards calls on the Benjamites to 
 escape from Jerusalem (vi. i), it is at least a tempting 
 conjecture that his own tribesmen and neighbours had 
 actually taken refuge in Jerusalem and that the city 
 itself was in danger *. The conclusion is very uncertain; 
 but we shall lose nothing if we take the Scythian poems 
 to be in the main imaginative anticipations of future 
 calamities, always shooting ahead of the accomplished 
 fact, but at the same time following more or less the 
 development of a grave national crisis which was as 
 real to the prophet's countrymen as it was to himselfs. 
 
 1 See Ewald, History of Israel (E.T.), iv, 230 f.; W. Erbt, Jeremia 
 und seine Zeit, pp. 208, 211. 
 
 2 Ewald assu mes that Josiah was actually besieged for a time in Jerusalem 
 by the Scythians on their return from the Egyptian frontier (I.e., p. 231). 
 
 3 The reading of the situation will depend largely on a difficult 
 section in ch. ii (vv. 14-17) in which Israel is spoken of as preyed 
 upon by lions, as having its cities burnt with fire, and its land laid waste. 
 The verses have often been considered an interpolated though genuine
 
 m] THE NORTHERN PERIL 45 
 
 However that may be, it is certain that Jeremiah was 
 left in the end with a considerable margin of unfulfilled 
 prediction on his hands. The crisis passed how long 
 it lasted we do not know the nation survived, and 
 years of peace and comparative security followed. How 
 this partial and temporary failure of his prophecies 
 affected the future of Jeremiah's activity, how it reacted 
 on his own conviction of the fundamental truth of his 
 message, are questions which will come up for considera- 
 tion at later stages of our study. 
 
 We now turn from the external circumstances to the 
 subjective aspect of this group of poems: their literary 
 characteristics, their emotional quality, and in general 
 the light they shed on Jeremiah's mind at this early 
 stage of his career. The most noteworthy feature of 
 these oracles is their purely lyrical character. They are, 
 
 fragment in ch. ii, composed by Jeremiah at a much later time, and 
 that is perhaps a possible view (see below, p. 56). But if they belong 
 to the early period of his ministry and are connected with the verses 
 which follow, no explanation of them is so satisfying as to suppose they 
 refer to the ravages of a recent Scythian invasion at the beginning of 
 Jeremiah's work. When we find further that they are associated with 
 allusions to a vacillating policy towards Assyria and Egypt (ii. 18; cf. 
 36 f.), the natural inference is that in the throes of alarm caused by the 
 approach of the Scythians the statesmen of Jerusalem turned for succour 
 first to the one great power and then to the other and were disappointed 
 in both cases. Thus far I am inclined to agree with the somewhat 
 hazardous speculations of Dr Erbt (/.f.). But that scholar seems to me to 
 draw too largely on his imagination when he assumes that the rumours 
 of the Scythian depredations were at first received in Jerusalem with 
 grim and eager satisfaction. The prevailing feeling was one of joy and 
 relief that Assyria's hour had come: whatever else might happen, the 
 hated world-empire would perish in this great tumult of the nations 
 (p. 1 86). Afterwards, when Judah was immediately threatened, help 
 was sought first from Assyria (which was in no condition to give it), 
 and then from Egypt (which was equally powerless and supine); and 
 finally, all other hope being abandoned, negotiations were attempted 
 with the Scythians themselves (iv. 30 f.: p. 200). These precarious 
 combinations afford no help in the interpretation of Jeremiah's writings.
 
 46 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. 
 
 as one critic has said, 'genuine lyrics, the spontaneous 
 outflow in language and imagery of inward experiences 
 and feelings 1 .' It may require a little effort to perceive 
 how completely true this is. We note at the outset that 
 they are not the direct word of the Lord to Jeremiah, 
 but the effect of that word on a sensitive human heart, 
 which gives forth its own peculiar tones like the Aeolian 
 harp when its strings are swept by the wind. The 
 speaker is not Yahwe but the prophet himself; the 
 identification of the human ego with the divine which is 
 so characteristic of prophetic utterance finds no expres- 
 sion here 2 . Here and there, it is true, they are converted 
 into direct oracles by an inserted heading or phrase 
 (e.g. iv. 9, 12, 1 7), but the metre generally enables us to 
 recognise these as no part of the original composition. 
 Nor again are they in their first intention a prophetic 
 message to men. The few cases where the people or 
 Jerusalem is addressed are of the nature of poetic 
 apostrophe rather than of prophetic exhortation (iv. 8 , 
 14, 1 8, 30 f., vi. i, 8, 26). 'Gird you with sackcloth for 
 this Lament and wail' is not so much a summons to 
 repentance as a vivid expression of how men would act 
 if they saw the coming danger as the prophet sees it. 
 Like all true lyrics, the poems have their end in them- 
 selves, in the artistic utterance of personal emotion; and 
 only in a secondary application do they become a medium 
 of enlightenment or instruction or warning to others. 
 
 This lyrical note had never been wholly absent from 
 Hebrew prophecy. Even in Amos and Isaiah, the most 
 severely ethical of Jeremiah's predecessors, it finds 
 occasional expression in the traditional form of the 
 elegy; and Ezekiel, the least sympathetic of his suc- 
 
 1 H. Schmidt, op. cit. p. 218. 
 
 This is true not only of the passages translated from ch. iv, but of 
 the whole series of Scythian poems, with the exception of ch. v. 1517, 
 which is a direct threat of judgment spoken in the name of Yahwe.
 
 m] THE NORTHERN PERIL 47 
 
 cessors, exhibits a surprising mastery of that form of 
 expression. In Jeremiah, however, the lyrical gift has a 
 range and depth of feeling and imagination which give 
 it a new significance. We cannot speak of him as 
 'warbling his native wood-notes wild' his mood is 
 too sombre for that but there is a spontaneity in the 
 outflow of his inmost, most human affections which is 
 found in no other prophet. Other prophets deliver their 
 message with no less intensity of personal conviction 
 than he; but their whole emotional nature goes with the 
 divine word they utter; and if they have other feelings, 
 of pity or compunction or depression under the burden 
 laid upon them, these as a rule are sternly repressed. In 
 Jeremiah's poetry all this is laid bare to us : the images 
 that distract and appal him, his mental distress and grief, 
 and his deep commiseration for the people he loves. In the 
 Scythian poems especially, this subjective vein so pre- 
 dominates as almost to conceal the underlying conscious- 
 ness that they are the inspired word of God to Israel. 
 
 But this richly developed subjectivity is not only 
 interesting as an indication of the bent of Jeremiah's 
 genius; it is also an important element in his endowment 
 for the experience of personal religion. There is perhaps 
 a passing hint of its significance in this respect in an 
 obscure verse imbedded in ch. iv, which I have omitted 
 in the translation because the manner of its introduction 
 makes it doubtful if it belongs to this period of the 
 prophet's life 1 (iv. 10). The words are: 
 
 Then I said, 'Ah, Lord Yahwe! 
 
 Thou hast simply deceived this people, 
 Saying "Ye shall have peace"; 
 
 And now the sword has pierced to the life!' 
 
 1 If it does, it can only refer to spurious oracles which had lulled the 
 people into a false sense of security; and we should have to conclude 
 that at this early time Jeremiah had not attained to a clear judgment on 
 the phenomenon of false prophecy (cf. liv. 13).
 
 48 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. 
 
 Here the prophet's sympathy for his compatriots breaks 
 out in a remonstrance with Yahwe, and a plea in ex- 
 tenuation of their guilt. It is the earliest trace in the 
 book of that reaction of human affection against the 
 constraint of prophetic conviction which contains the 
 germ of the peculiar modification of the prophetic 
 consciousness which comes to light in Jeremiah's later 
 experience. 
 
 Erbt makes the observation that Jeremiah was the 
 first to introduce into prophecy this opposition between 
 conscience and feeling, or between the voice of God and 
 the impulse of the heart 1 . In the pages of Hosea, how- 
 ever, we find the struggle between the claims of 
 righteousness and of mercy portrayed with a power 
 which even Jeremiah does not surpass (Hos. vi. 4, vii. 
 15, xi. 8 ff., etc.). If there be a difference between the 
 two prophets, it is that Hosea reflects the conflict back 
 into the mind of God: it is Yahwe's own heart which is 
 torn by the antagonism of justice and affection : that is 
 to say, the prophet feels that both sides of his nature 
 represent aspects of the mind of Yahwe towards Israel. 
 So far as the idea of God is concerned, that is perhaps 
 the highest truth that the prophetic theology ever 
 reached, and it is exquisitely expressed by Jeremiah 
 himself. 
 
 Is Ephraim a favourite son 
 A darling child, 
 
 That so oft as I speak against him 
 I remember him still? 
 
 Therefore my heart is moved for him: 
 I have compassion on him 2 . 
 
 That which is characteristic of Jeremiah is the dialogue 
 of two voices within himself, one known to be divine, 
 and the other consciously his own. As Hegel said of 
 
 1 Op. clt. p. 199. 
 
 2 Ch. xxxi. 20; cf. iii. 12, 19, 22, vi. 8, xii. 7, xxxi. 3-5, etc.
 
 m] THE NORTHERN PERIL 49 
 
 himself, he was not one of the combatants, but rather 
 both of the combatants, and also the combat itself. It is 
 possible that in ch. iv. 10, we have an early example of 
 this conflict; but how deeply it was lodged in the 
 consciousness of the prophet is only seen in the solitary 
 wrestling with the mystery of his vocation which marked 
 his riper years. 
 
 There is another feature of these poems on which 
 some writers lay stress, as illustrating Jeremiah's mental 
 condition at this time. It is thought that they show 
 traces of having been composed in a state of mind 
 bordering on ecstasy, similar to that in which he ex- 
 perienced the call to be a prophet. The question thus 
 raised is obviously one of peculiar difficulty. The differ- 
 ence between the voluntary exercise of the imagination, 
 which is of the essence of poetry, and the automatic 
 working of it, in which images impress themselves on* 
 the senses like realities (as in a dream), is perhaps only 
 a difference of degree. In certain natures there appears 
 to be a point at which under intense feeling the one 
 condition passes into the other; and in literature it must 
 always be a very delicate if not impossible task to 
 discriminate between them. Now most of these Scythian 
 poems would pass without question as ordinary examples 
 of poetic imagination. But there are some which do 
 produce the impression of being a record of real 
 visionary experiences. The strongest case is the passage 
 translated above, beginning ' My bowels, my bowels ! 
 I writhe in pain' (iv. 1921), which has even been char- 
 acterised as ' among the best descriptions of a vision in 
 the Old Testament, nay in all literature 1 .' The excite- 
 ment under which the prophet labours strains the heart 
 as if it would break; his ears are filled with a medley of 
 horrid sounds, in which are mingled the blare of the 
 trumpet, the shouting of battle, the crash of falling 
 1 Schmidt, op. cit. p. 205. 
 
 S.P.R. A.
 
 50 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. 
 
 towers the crack of doom: he is in a tent which 
 suddenly collapses and cannot be raised l . And the effect 
 does not wear off; go where he will, he cannot get rid 
 of the signal fluttering before his eyes, or the sound of 
 the trumpet in his ears. Is all this complaint of bodily 
 pains, this accumulation of incongruous images, merely 
 a 'nice derangement of metaphors,' or is it a description 
 of Jeremiah's actual sensations? The answer to that 
 question is not so clear as Schmidt thinks; but certainly 
 there are here all the symptoms of a dream-like condition 
 of mind, in which the perturbation of the prophet's 
 waking thoughts takes fantastic forms in the 'heat- 
 oppressed brain.' The following poem, the 'Vision of 
 Chaos' in w. 2326, might be explained in a similar 
 sense. Jeremiah, walking abroad, is suddenly over- 
 powered by his inward agitation : the familiar landscape 
 is obliterated from his view; heaven's light is extin- 
 guished, and the earth is dissolved into chaos; the hills 
 become ghostly shapes that reel and totter around him. 
 Sign or sound of life there is none in all the weird 
 desolation; no man is there; the singing birds (objects 
 of special interest to Jeremiah) have flown away. It 
 
 1 The image of the falling tent recurs in a still more striking form 
 in ch. x. 1922; and relying on that parallel I have in translating 
 substituted the sing, 'my tent,' for the plu. in the text of iv. 20. In 
 ch. x, but for one half-verse (19 ^), it would be natural to explain 
 the passage allegorically, the speaker being the personified nation, and 
 the theme the desolation of Exile (see Peake, ad Joe.). But when Jeremiah 
 exclaims 'This is a sickness, and I must bear it,' it is clear that he is 
 speaking of an experience of which he himself is the subject; and we 
 are driven to interpret it after the analogy of iv. 20. The allusion in 
 I. 22 to a rumour 'from the land of the north' might suggest that this 
 poem belongs to the Scythian cycle; but we cannot be sure of that. For 
 one thing, the connexion of v. 22 with the vision is so loose that the 
 Massoretes commence a new section there. Apart from that, the vision 
 is one that might recur at any time when the prophet was brooding over 
 his people's fate, and would bring with it the thought of the northern 
 terror with which it was originally associated.
 
 m] THE NORTHERN PERIL 51 
 
 would be impossible to determine more precisely to 
 what extent this visionary element pervades the early 
 poetry of Jeremiah, and no good purpose would be 
 served by attempting a minute analysis. It seems a 
 plausible opinion that he was subject to such moods at 
 all periods of his life (the last recorded instance being 
 xxxviii. 2123), but at no time with such frequency as 
 during the crisis of the Scythian invasion I . If this be 
 so, the fact is interesting as a proof of the agitation into 
 which his youthful spirit was thrown by his first vivid 
 presentiment of divine judgment on his nation, and also 
 as a revelation of the psychological process by which 
 his prophetic intuitions took shape in his mind. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on the broad character- 
 istics of this group of poems, partly because I regard 
 them as the very earliest revelation of Jeremiah's genius, 
 but still more because they exhibit tendencies and 
 qualities of mind which are of importance in estimating 
 his contribution to the development of prophecy and 
 of subjective piety. Throughout his life the stream of 
 lyric poetry which we strike here at the fountain head 
 flowed steadily, though perhaps in diminishing volume, 
 enriching the literature of Israel with some of its choicest 
 strains. Through life also his inspiration frequently took 
 the form of vision and audition though he learned that 
 these conditions were not to be identified with standing 
 in the council of the Lord and hearing His word. In 
 Jeremiah the poet and the prophet are combined in a 
 unique degree; and since 'character ripens more slowly 
 than talent' it is not surprising if in his youth the poetic 
 impulse seems to overshadow the prophetic 3 . But a 
 
 1 Holscher (Die Profeten, p. 294) gives an incomplete list of instances : 
 iii. 21, iv. 13, i $, 18-21, 23-26, 31, v. 13, 14, vi. n, viii. 16, 19, 20, 
 i. 22, xxiii. 9. It will be seen that the majority of them are in Scythian 
 poems. 
 
 z Compare the remarks of Duhm, Kurzer Hand-commentar, p. 47. 
 
 4
 
 52 THE NORTHERN PERIL [CH. m 
 
 prophet he was at the core of his being; and as he beat 
 his music out he realised ever more clearly that his life 
 was rooted in personal fellowship with the God who 
 spoke to him and through him in his gift of lyrical 
 utterance as well as in the direct revelation of His 
 character and will.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 
 
 ^ II ^HE message of the pre-exilic prophets rests on 
 JL two fundamental convictions. One is the certainty 
 or presentiment of an impending historical crisis with 
 disastrous issues for the nation of Israel, and the other 
 the verdict of their conscience on the religious and social 
 disorders of their time. It is an interesting but not very 
 important question which of these was primary, and 
 which was derivative, in the mind of the prophet. Was 
 he first roused by what Amos calls the roar of Yahwe 
 the premonition of judgment mysteriously awakened 
 within him; and did he then, seeing how unprepared 
 his people were to meet their God, proceed to denounce 
 their sin, and call them to repentance? Or was it the 
 other way about? Was his conscience first stirred by 
 the evidence of abounding iniquity and irreligion, and 
 was he thus led to scan the political horizon for signs 
 of the retribution which, from his faith in the divine 
 righteousness, he knew to be inevitable? These ques- 
 tions mark two opposite tendencies among modern 
 writers on prophecy; but it is doubtful if the prophets 
 themselves could have answered them. The presenti- 
 ment of coming doom was the result of a variety of 
 subtle impressions borne in upon their minds from 
 many quarters impressions which they could not have 
 analysed, and of which they may often have been 
 unconscious until they came to them in the form of a 
 vision. A conscience sensitive to the presence of moral 
 evil in the life around them was an essential part of 
 their endowment; but it did not work in isolation from
 
 54 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 their other faculties, as if its only function had been to 
 find a moral justification for a calamity otherwise fore- 
 seen : it was a vital element of the insight which enabled 
 them to discern the signs of the time. Whether in any 
 particular prophet the emphasis was more on the one 
 idea or the other, and which of them came first in the 
 delivery of his public message, are questions of second- 
 ary moment. It is the combination of the two, and their 
 convergence on a single aim, which is the distinctive 
 feature of the higher prophecy of the Old Testament. 
 
 These two aspects of the prophetic preaching are 
 clearly distinguished in the first six chapters of the 
 book of Jeremiah, the kernel of which consists of 
 oracles dating from the earliest period of his ministry, 
 viz. the five years between his call in 626 and the 
 Deuteronomic reformation in 621. In the Scythian 
 poems of ch. iv we have seen how the foreboding 
 of a great world-convulsion agitated the mind of the 
 prophet, and found expression in the remarkable series 
 of lyrics of which that chapter is mainly composed. We 
 are now to examine an equally striking and homogeneous 
 collection of prophecies in ch. ii, where the ethical 
 note of prophecy is illustrated in a criticism of the 
 religious as distinct from moral* corruptions of the time. 
 In tone and literary character these poems present a 
 significant contrast to those of ch. iv. The Scythian 
 poems are dominated by the apprehension of imminent 
 calamity; allusions to the sin which is the cause of the 
 judgment are few and casual, and some of them are 
 later additions. The prophet speaks in his own name 
 throughout, and expresses his own personal feelings; 
 and there are indications that they were partly com- 
 posed under ecstatic conditions. In ch. ii all this is 
 reversed. There is first of all a marked change of 
 
 1 The polemic against the moral evils of society commences at ch. v, 
 and is dealt with in a later connexion (see Chap, vm below).
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 55 
 
 emphasis. Here the main theme is the religious apostasy 
 of the nation and its bitter consequences already experi- 
 enced; the threat of judgment holds a very subordinate 
 place. Again, the poems of ch. ii are not a lyrical 
 outpouring of private emotion like those of ch. iv, 
 but direct prophetic discourse addressed to the heart 
 and conscience of the people. The speaker is Yahwe, 
 and traces of visionary excitement on the part of the 
 prophet are entirely absent. Now it is difficult to think 
 that these profound differences are due merely to 
 editorial selection and arrangement of oracles issued 
 promiscuously during the same period of Jeremiah's 
 history. The mental strain and agitation which is every- 
 where visible in ch. iv can hardly have alternated 
 with the quieter reflective mood which is characteristic 
 of ch. ii. It is more natural to suppose that two 
 successive stages of the prophet's activity are repre- 
 sented; and assuming (as we safely may) that both 
 belong to his early years, the only question is whether 
 the stage represented by ch. ii preceded or followed 
 the Scythian poems of ch. iv. It is conceivable, as 
 some critics hold, that the order of the chapters is 
 chronological : that Jeremiah was preoccupied with the 
 corrupt state of public religion, and foresaw the judg- 
 ment as a moral necessity, before the trumpet-blast 
 smote on his inner ear, and his whole being was con- 
 vulsed by the portent of 'evil looming in the north and 
 dire destruction.' The obvious objection to that view is 
 the vision of the seething cauldron in i. 1 3 f. : if that 
 vision belongs to Jeremiah's initiatory experiences, it 
 would be difficult to account for the absence of the 
 foreboding which it expresses from his first prophecies, 
 and its sudden emergence at a somewhat later time. 
 For this and other reasons I prefer the view that the 
 oracles of ch. ii belong mainly to the more tranquil 
 period when the Scythian invasion was past, though
 
 56 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 traces of its ravages were still visible as a reminder of 
 the chastisement which the nation had suffered because 
 of its ungodliness x . Fortunately, however, our under- 
 standing of Jeremiah's point of view is not greatly 
 
 1 This opinion is confirmed by vv. 14-19 of ch. ii, if they belong 
 to the group of poems with which we are concerned, and if vv. 14-17 
 be not (as many hold) an interpolated section of later date (see the note 
 on p. 44f. above). To that note I here add a few remarks on the historical 
 setting of these vv. Three theories are advanced, (a) That the section is 
 one of the earliest poems of Jeremiah, composed before the Scythian 
 raid. So Duhm, who regards vv. 14-17 as the original sequel and 
 antithesis to the ideal picture of Israel's past in vv. ib, 3. He takes the 
 verb in v. 16 (where I adopt his ingenious reading "IIIJT f r "liyV) 
 as a future, in distinction from the past tenses of vv. 14 f., which refer 
 to the injuries which the nation had sustained through foreign aggression, 
 especially from the Assyrians, in the course of its past history. The 
 expressions of v. 15, however, seem to me to point to a more recent 
 disaster than any Assyrian invasion we know of, and there is a difficulty 
 in the abrupt introduction of Egypt as a future oppressor. (J>) Giese- 
 brecht, who assigns the compilation of ch. ii to the reign of Jehoiakim, 
 holds that the reference in p. 16 is to the depredations of the Egyptian 
 army which defeated Josiah at Megiddo in 608, the verb being rendered 
 as a frequentative present. This solution fails to give a sufficiently definite 
 meaning to the language of vv. 14 f., where the historic tenses imply a 
 distinction between the ravages there described and those inflicted by 
 the Egyptians. Another objection is that the situation it presupposes is 
 inconsistent with v. 1 8, and therefore requires the detachment of vv. 
 1417 as an isolated fragment from their context. For if we assume with 
 G. that v. 1 8 alludes to pro-Egyptian tendencies manifested in Jerusalem 
 after sufficient time had elapsed for the lesson of Megiddo to be for- 
 gotten, we are confronted by the difficulty that by that time Assyria had 
 ceased to be a formidable world-power, whose alliance would be likely 
 to be sought by any political party in Judah. (r) There remains the 
 view which I have followed: that vv. \ti. refer to the effects of the 
 Scythian raids, that the reference to Egypt in v. 16 is predictive, and 
 that v. 1 8 alludes to contemporary approaches to Assyria and Egypt for 
 help against the Scythians. Cornill,who considers vv. 14 17 an interpola- 
 tion in this chapter, has come at last to the conclusion that only vv. 1 4, i 5 
 are genuine words of Jeremiah, vv. 16, 17 being a spurious editorial addi- 
 tion suggested by 18 and 19 (see the Introduction to his commentary, 
 p. xli #.). The translation of the passage will be found on p. 66 below.
 
 ir] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 57 
 
 affected by this difference of opinion, so long as we see 
 good reason to believe that he is still at the opening of 
 his public career. We may therefore leave that issue in 
 abeyance, and proceed to the exposition of these pro- 
 phetic reflexions on the practical religion of the average 
 Israelite in the seventh century before Christ. 
 
 While every true prophet is in opposition to the 
 religious ideas and tendencies of his age, and in exposing 
 their fallacies and aberrations reveals what religion 
 means to himself, there is no one who has analysed the 
 diverse and successive currents of spiritual influence in 
 the society around him with such penetrating and sym- 
 pathetic insight as Jeremiah. There is none, either, 
 whose whole thinking is so permeated by the experience 
 of direct personal fellowship with God, which is the 
 ultimate basis and secret of religious life. It is of peculiar 
 interest to ascertain how such a man viewed the common 
 religious beliefs and practices of his contemporaries; 
 and happily we have abundant means of satisfying our 
 desire. In the poems now before us we find a first instal- 
 ment of this aspect of his teaching : viz. an estimate of 
 the popular religion of Israel from the standpoint of 
 the prophetic theology. Here we have ample material 
 for a study of Jeremiah's early convictions on the nature 
 of religion. 
 
 It was a natural consequence of Jeremiah's upbring- 
 ing in a country village that his first impressions of the 
 religious condition of his people were drawn from the 
 crude notions and half-heathen ritual of the rural popu- 
 lation around his home. In the second chapter there is 
 no certain allusion to the capital T , or the official religion 
 
 1 Unless the word fr^J ('valley') in v. 23 denotes the Hinnom 
 valley in the southern outskirts of Jerusalem, which is a possible, but 
 not certain, interpretation (see below). The LXX adds to v . 28 a clause 
 from xi. 13 mentioning the 'streets of Jerusalem' in parallelism with the 
 'cities of Judah'; but it is doubtful if the phrase be original here.
 
 58 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 of the Temple, or the tone of religion in the upper 
 ranks of society: what Jeremiah thought on these 
 matters we have to learn from later discourses. We 
 assume that he is still living in his father's house at 
 Anathoth, within sight and hearing of the local sanc- 
 tuary where the village people and the surrounding 
 peasants and shepherds held their festivals and per- 
 formed their devotions: with which, we may assume, 
 the priestly traditions of his family had made him 
 familiar. There he would make his first acquaintance 
 with public religion as understood and practised by his 
 neighbours. And he knew that in this respect Anathoth 
 was just a microcosm of the national life. The cultus 
 observed there was in all essentials the same as that 
 which was practised at scores of shrines throughout the 
 land; it was the religion of Israel, for it expressed far 
 more truly than the elaborate ritual of the Temple the 
 native bent of the national mind in its effort after con- 
 tact with the divine. Its monuments were scattered over 
 the face of the country in altars on every high hill and 
 under every green tree (ii. 20), on the 'bare height* 
 (iii. 2) whence resounded the 'revelry of the mountains' 
 (iii. 23), the orgies of licentious worship which made 
 day and night hideous to the refined ear of the prophet. 
 And all this was but the visible and outward symbol 
 of the ingrained habit and disposition of the people: 
 the legible record of its sinful propensities (xvii. 13). 
 Now to describe this 'popular religion' of Israel in 
 detail is a task beyond the scope of our present inquiry. 
 But it is important to realise that it was not altogether 
 a chaotic and fortuitous upgrowth of primitive super- 
 stitions such as survive beneath the surface of civilisa- 
 tion in all parts of the world. It had a definite historical 
 origin in the circumstances of the settlement in Canaan, 
 and the transition from nomadic to agricultural life; 
 and through all its developments down to the exile it
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 59 
 
 retained a certain continuity of principle impressed 
 upon it at the beginning. Jeremiah had meditated deeply 
 both on its origin and its essence, and it will help us to 
 understand his criticism if we first look at the historic 
 significance of the phenomenon with which he is dealing. 
 The occupation of Palestine by the Hebrew tribes 
 brought about a peculiar 'polarity' in their religious 
 attitude. They found themselves confronted by a type 
 of religion hitherto unknown, but one which had a 
 strong fascination for the sensuous side of their Semitic 
 nature. This was the nature-religion of the Canaanites, 
 whose manner of life they necessarily adopted, and with 
 whom they largely intermingled. It centred in the 
 worship of the Baals, the local divinities, who were 
 regarded as the bestowers of life, fertility and increase, 
 within the limited sphere of influence which belonged 
 to each. The earliest contact of the Israelites with this 
 type of religion took place, according to the tradition, 
 at Baal-Peor on the east of the Jordan (Num. xxv. 3, 
 xxxi. 16; Deut. iv. 3, etc.); and the prophet Hosea 
 traces the beginning of their apostasy to the readiness 
 with which they succumbed to its immoral attractions 
 (Hos. ix. 10). But what happened at Baal-Peor was 
 repeated with variations at every centre of Canaanite 
 worship after the conquest of western Palestine. The 
 danger of contamination from this impure religion was 
 enhanced by the fact that the desert faith of Israel made 
 no express provision for the devotional exercises suitable 
 to the needs of an agricultural community. Thus* it 
 came about that Yahwe was recognised as the God of 
 the nation, whose presence was realised in times of 
 great national enthusiasm; but He was not at first 
 apprehended as the God of the land, and the dispenser 
 of the good gifts of corn and wine and oil which the 
 former owners of the soil had gratefully ascribed to the 
 Baals. Hence when the sentiment of national unity was
 
 60 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 weakened through the dispersion and isolation of the 
 tribes, and faith in Yahwe burned low, the cult of the 
 local deity seemed to suffice for all the religious wants 
 of which the ordinary Israelite was conscious. 
 
 It is probable that the ordinary Israelite in the early 
 stages of the settlement saw no great harm in having 
 ' one religion for times of patriotic exaltation and another 
 for daily life 1 ,' and abandoned himself to the seductions 
 of Baal-worship with no thought of finally renouncing 
 his national religion. But it was impossible for a 
 permanent rivalry to exist between the God of the con- 
 quering race and the gods of the conquered land; and 
 in course of time the two religions coalesced by an 
 unstable compromise, in which Yahwe nominally sup- 
 planted the Baals as Lord of Canaan, and the bestower 
 of the fertility of the soil. The change was not wholly 
 for the worse; for in bringing the name of Yahwe into 
 relation with every day concerns it tended to elevate 
 the life of the people by associating its worship with 
 the ethical and social ideals with which the national 
 faith was identified. But this gain was more than 
 neutralised by the degradation of Yahwe to the level 
 of a nature-deity, and by the absorption of the old 
 Canaanite ritual with all its repellent features into the 
 public cultus of Israel. To the prophets, at all events, 
 Baal and Yahwe stand for mutually exclusive principles 
 of religion; and inasmuch as the character of a religion 
 is determined not by the name of its God but by the 
 kind of service in which he is supposed to delight, they 
 do not hesitate to characterise the popular religion of 
 Israel as a worship of Baal under the guise of the 
 worship of Yahwe 2 . 
 
 1 W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 39 (and Ed.). 
 
 2 Strictly speaking, perhaps, this applies only to Hosea and Jeremiah, 
 the two prophets who after Elijah emphasise the contrast between the 
 ethical religion of prophecy and the nature-worship into which the
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 61 
 
 That this is not a fanciful sketch of the origin and 
 spirit of the popular religion of Israel appears most 
 clearly from the analysis of it given in the second 
 chapter of Hosea. Speaking of Israel under the figure 
 of the wife of Yahwe, the prophet describes her actual 
 religion as spiritual adultery with the false deities who 
 had seduced her from her true allegiance. It is enough 
 to quote the few verses in which he exposes the con- 
 fusion of ideas which had led her astray. ' For she said, 
 "I will go after my lovers (the Baals), the givers of my 
 bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my 
 drink." Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, 
 and wall her up that she find not her paths. And when 
 she pursues her lovers without reaching them, and seeks 
 them without finding them, then she will say, "I will 
 return to my first husband, for better it was with me 
 then than now." But she knew not that it was I who 
 gave her the corn and the must and the oil, and be- 
 stowed on her much silver and gold' (Hos. ii. 710). 
 No words could more clearly express the essentially 
 pagan character of the prevalent worship, or the con- 
 popular religion had degenerated. Other prophets deal with the evils 
 of the cultus rather as a corruption within the national religion than as a 
 foreign element derived from another religion. The difference is only 
 formal : Amos and Isaiah accept the profession of the people that their 
 worship is addressed to Yahwe, while Hosea and Jeremiah criticise this 
 pretension, and show that it rests on a confusion of the nature of Baal 
 with that of Yahwe. It is worth noting in this connexion that the divine 
 names Baal and Baalim are almost confined to Hosea and Jeremiah 
 among the canonical prophets. They occur about 1 5 times in the book 
 of Jeremiah (though certainly not all the passages are genuine) and six 
 times in Hosea: elsewhere we have only the solitary mention of the 
 'remnant of Baal' in Zeph. i. 4. The coincidence may be due to the 
 influence of the older prophet on the younger, but there may be a deeper 
 reason. Anathoth belonged to the tribe of Benjamin, whose affinities 
 were with the then extinct kingdom of Samaria; and it is possible that 
 this type of religion was more characteristic of the genial and fertile 
 central region than of the sterner climate of Judah.
 
 62 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 viction that it was a reversion to the Canaanite nature- 
 religion in which it originated. 
 
 There is, however, one difference between the popular 
 religion of Jeremiah's time and that of Hosea's, which 
 is symptomatic of a changed religious atmosphere. This 
 is the prevalence of child-sacrifice, which, although of 
 immemorial antiquity in Palestine, and prominent in 
 the Phoenician religion, does not appear to have been 
 adopted by the Israelites till a late period. There is no 
 trace of it in the prophets of the eighth century, nor 
 indeed in the history except in the single case of Ahaz 
 (2 Kings xvi. 3). The impression we get from the pages 
 of Amos and Hosea is that the spirit of the popular 
 worship was one of unrestrained mirth and festivity, 
 untroubled by the morbid fears which impelled a man 
 to give the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul. In 
 Jeremiah (and Ezekiel), on the contrary, references to 
 this custom are explicit and frequent, and they show 
 that like other abominations of Canaanite ritual it had 
 been incorporated in the worship of Yahwe 1 . It may 
 
 1 See Jer. vii. 31, xix. 5, xxxii. 35; Ezek. xvi. 20 f., 36, xx. 26, 31, 
 xxiii. 37, 39: cf. Mic. vi. 6-8; and Wellhausen, Isr. und jild. Gesch. 
 (5th Ed.), pp. I34f. Whether human sacrifice is mentioned in ch. ii 
 of Jer. is a difficult question of exegesis. As already remarked (p. 57 .), 
 the words 'thy way in the valley' in f. 23 have been taken to refer to 
 the rites of the Topheth in the valley of Hinnom. This interpretation 
 has with some reason been questioned by Duhm on the ground that 
 the vague expression rather suggests some more widely diffused feature 
 of the prevalent religious apostasy. On the other hand, the same writer 
 holds that vv. 3 33 5 are a description of child-sacrifice, and not (as is 
 commonly supposed) an allusion to executions and judicial murders 
 perpetrated under Manasseh. The verses are obscure and the text 
 uncertain ; but whether we follow the Heb. or the LXX form of 3 3 b, 
 the idea of the verse must be that in the search for love (illicit religious 
 satisfaction) Israel had become habituated to flagrantly wicked courses. 
 That is more intelligible as leading up to a denunciation of child-sacrifice 
 than on the supposition that civil bloodshed of any kind is meant. V. 34 
 is ambiguous; but here again it seems more natural to understand the
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 63 
 
 well have been that the evils of the time, the long- 
 continued Assyrian tyranny, the bloody persecutions of 
 the reign of Manasseh, as well as the persistent propa- 
 ganda of the prophetic party, had undermined the old 
 joyous confidence in the favour and protection of Yah we, 
 and produced the mood of superstitious fear which 
 found relief in this hideous form of sacrifice. 
 
 Such were the outstanding features of the popular 
 religion of Israel, whose abuses flourished unchecked 
 until Josiah set his hand to the task of reformation in 
 the year 621. It does not appear that the thought of 
 reform has as yet crossed the mind of the young prophet 
 whose impressions of the religious condition of his 
 countrymen are reflected in the passage now before us. 
 Jeremiah's criticism of the prevalent tendencies of the 
 age proceeds on the lines drawn by his predecessor 
 Hosea. It starts from the conception of Yahwe's relation 
 to Israel as analogous to the marriage covenant between 
 husband and wife. The genuine religion of Israel con- 
 sists in the knowledge of Yahwe her divine Husband 
 and Lord, and a moral fellowship with Him which 
 accords with His holy and righteous character. The 
 actual religion of the people, as expressed in its worship, 
 lacks this ethical element, and is therefore in the judg- 
 ment of the prophet no true service of Yahwe at all. It 
 is illicit intercourse with the false gods who were per- 
 sonifications of the productive powers of nature. The 
 god whom Israel ignorantly worships is not Yahwe but 
 a Baal, or rather as many Baals as there are images of 
 
 blood found on the skirts of the personified nation to be the blood shed 
 in sacrifice than the blood of martyrs or innocent citizens; and if we 
 
 read H/X with the LXX instead of H yK no other view is tenable. 
 
 Finally v. 3 5 as expressing, on Duhm's theory, the atoning effect of the 
 sacrificial rite ('I am absolved') forms a suitable climax to the prophet's 
 indictment; whereas on the other view it must refer to some quite 
 separate ground of assurance.
 
 64 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 deity throughout the land. These are the 'lovers' or 
 paramours who have seduced her from her allegiance 
 to her true husband, and transformed the spirit of her 
 religion by substituting a sensuous nature-worship for 
 the 'reasonable service' of heart and life in which Yahwe 
 delights. We can easily see that this circle of conceptions 
 forms the basis of Jeremiah's strictures on the public 
 religion of his day, which we now proceed to examine 
 more closely. The main points of his indictment may 
 be summed up in four words: Degeneracy, Sensualism, 
 Double-mindedness and Unreality. 
 
 i . To Jeremiah the religious history of his people 
 is a record of Degeneration of declension from a pure 
 and lofty origin; and this conviction imparts a peculiar 
 tone of regret to his whole survey of its present degrada- 
 tion. He idealises the wilderness sojourn as a time when 
 Israel's relation to Yahwe was perfect. A relation of 
 tender and beautiful affection, as of a young bride to 
 her husband, a joyous and fearless devotion to her God 
 in the midst of perils and hardships: that was the 
 origin of Israel's national religion. And the memory of 
 that hallowed time is still dear to the heart of Yahwe, 
 and makes him slow to abandon hope of her recovery 
 (&**): 
 
 26 1 remember the grace of thy youth, 
 
 Thy love as a bride: 
 How thou followedst Me in the waste, 
 
 In a land unsown. 
 3 Holy was Israel to Yahwe, 
 Firstfruits of His harvest: 
 None who devoured it went scatheless, 
 
 Evil o'ertook them. 
 
 In this idealisation of the desert religion of Israel 
 Jeremiah again follows Hosea (Hos. ix. 10, xi. i). The 
 essential idea which both prophets mean to convey is 
 that the national religion was then uncontaminated by
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 65 
 
 the corrupting influences of the Canaanite Baalism; and 
 that of course is historically true, though scarcely true 
 to the view of the wilderness period given in the 
 Pentateuchal tradition. It is, for example, almost in- 
 credible that either prophet should have written as he 
 does if the incident of the Golden Calf at Sinai had 
 been known to him (Exod. xxxii). Hosea's neglect of 
 it might be explained by the supposition that in his 
 time the tradition was inchoate, and perhaps included 
 little beyond the salient events of the deliverance from 
 Egypt, the Sinaitic Covenant, the sojourn at Kadesh, 
 and the conquest of Canaan. The section on the Golden 
 Calf is usually assigned to a comparatively late stratum 
 of the Elohistic document, which may very well have 
 been added after Hosea's time. Jeremiah's indifference 
 to it is less easily accounted for. It must have been 
 within his lifetime, if not before his day, that a Deutero- 
 nomic writer worked the incident into his hortatory 
 review of the history as a warning against the idolatrous 
 propensities that lay in the heart of the people (Deut. 
 ix. 12 ff., etc.); and this suggests that it had already 
 found a place in the older document on which the 
 Deuteronomic narrative is based. The prophet's inde- 
 pendence of the tradition is therefore a remarkable and 
 somewhat perplexing fact, which gives rise to critical 
 problems too complex to be entered on here. The 
 simplest solution will be that Jeremiah accepts and 
 amplifies Hosea's view of the religious development, 
 and is at this early period of his life either ignorant of 
 or indifferent to the literary activity which was con- 
 solidating the history of the Mosaic age. In any case it 
 is an important fact that Jeremiah, in common (it would 
 seem) with the earlier prophets, looks back to the past 
 as the ideal from which the people has fallen away. 
 Ezekiel is the first prophet who teaches that Israel had 
 been rebellious from the outset.
 
 66 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 The contrast to the ideal condition described in vv. 
 13 follows in vv. 1419. 
 
 *4ls Israel a bondman, 
 
 Or house-born slave? 
 Why then is he plundered 
 His cities burned down 1 ? 
 
 I S"Young lions against him have roared 
 
 Loud lifted their voice, 
 And made of his land a waste, 
 None dwelling therein. 
 
 16 Yea the sons of Memphis and Daphnai 
 
 Shall shave thee bald 2 . 
 J 7 Is not this the result of departing 
 
 From Yahwe thy God? 
 
 18 And now, why goest thou to Egypt 
 
 Nile- water to drink? 
 And why dost thou go to Assyria 
 To drink of the Stream ? 
 
 *9Let thine own misfortune reprove thee! 
 
 Acknowledge and see 
 How bitter it is, thy departing 
 
 From Yahwe thy God! 
 And that fear of Me thou hast none, 
 
 Saith Yahwe of hosts. 
 
 The historical implications of these verses have been 
 sufficiently discussed on pp. 44 f., 56 nn.\ and their 
 didactic significance requires no elucidation. They are 
 separated from the introductory poem of vv. 13 by a 
 passage (vv. 413) in which we recognise some of the 
 profoundest and most characteristic of Jeremiah's ideas. 
 It is in the form of a rhetorical expostulation a rib 
 
 1 Parallelism and rhythm are improved by the transposition of this 
 line from near the end of the following verse, 
 y* for "spun* , with Duhm.
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 67 
 
 (v. 9) in which the people are addressed directly and 
 collectively, the personification of the nation being 
 dropped, as the prophet might have spoken to an 
 assembly in the Temple courts. It is an exposition of 
 the causes which have alienated the people from their 
 true national religion. Why has Israel departed from 
 Yahwe, forgotten Him, even ceased to inquire after 
 Him ? Did they find Him unfaithful or harsh or unjust ? 
 (v. 5). How could they so lightly forget Him who had 
 led them safely through the terrible wilderness, and 
 brought them to a goodly land to enjoy its fruits and 
 its treasures (vv. 6, 7) ? It was because on their entrance 
 into this land they had met with another god, the 
 Canaanite Baal, and to him they had basely and ungrate- 
 fully transferred their homage (vv. 7, 8). Jeremiah here 
 touches on the historical fact already referred to, that 
 Israel's first contact with the culture of Palestine had 
 transformed both the spirit and the form of its religion 
 by introducing into it a foreign principle which made 
 it no longer a moral fellowship with Yahwe, but a 
 sensuous abandonment to the worship of nature. Such 
 a change seems to the prophet a monstrous and incom- 
 prehensible thing. Even among the heathen there is no 
 such thing as wilful exchange of one false national 
 deity for another (vv. 10, n); and for Israel to have 
 exchanged the one Being who is truly God for a fictitious 
 being who 'does not profit' is a thing fit to shock 
 heaven and horrify earth (v. 12). It bears witness to 
 some radical depravity in the national character, which 
 perverts every sound religious instinct, and has disap- 
 pointed Yahwe's expectation of a response to His grace 
 and loving-kindness; v. 21 : 
 
 Yet with choicest vines did I plant thee, 
 All genuine seed. 
 
 How art thou turned to a nauseous 
 Degenerate plant? 
 
 5-*
 
 68 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 2. The image of the vineyard in v. 21 suggests the 
 transition from the thought of Degeneracy to a second 
 feature of the popular religion, viz. its gross and re- 
 volting Sensuality. If a vineyard stocked wholly with 
 the choicest vines produces degenerate grapes, there 
 must be something wrong with the soil. So in the soil 
 of the national disposition Jeremiah discovers the secret 
 of Israel's amazing apostasy. The true religion was a 
 'yoke' a moral discipline (v. 20; cf. v. 5), laying a 
 restraint on the carnal impulses of human nature. But 
 there was a vein of grossness in the nature/ of the 
 Hebrews which broke loose from the control of an 
 ethical religion, and found in the licentious rites of the 
 Canaanite worship an irresistible attraction; v. 20: 
 
 From of old thou hast broken thy yoke, 
 
 And burst thy thongs; 
 
 And said 'I will not serve': 
 
 While on every high hill, 
 
 And 'neath every green tree, 
 Thou sprawledst, a harlot 1 . 
 
 Now we need not expect in a Hebrew prophet the 
 easy tolerance of a modern anthropologist in judging 
 the character of an alien religion; but the prophet's 
 estimate is likely to be the sounder of the two. The 
 whole type of ancient religion with which Jeremiah is 
 here dealing may be said to have rested on a deification 
 of the sexual instinct. It was an interpretation of nature 
 by false analogies from the process of physical genera- 
 tion; and it made a persistent appeal to the powerful 
 impulse in which it originated. Its divinity was con- 
 ceived as divided into a male and a female principle, 
 
 1 The same idea is still more drastically expressed in the comparison 
 of the nation to a domestic animal a young she-camel or a heifer 
 running wild in the heat of sexual desire, utterly beyond the control of 
 her owner, but easily approachable by the males who seek her (vv. 236, 
 24). The text of these verses is very uncertain, and the combination of 
 metaphors embarrassing.
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 69 
 
 whose marriage was the cause of fertility and fecundity 
 and all the blessings which accrued to men from this 
 source. Moreover, it taught its votaries that union with 
 the deity was realised by fleshly intercourse with sacred 
 persons dedicated to this purpose at the sanctuaries. 
 However innocent we may suppose these ideas and 
 practices in their crude primitive naivete, it is obvious 
 that a religion so constituted must act as a leaven of 
 moral corruption in any community that had risen above 
 the level of savagery. Hence the system of religious 
 prostitution in Israel was a social evil infecting the 
 whole life of the nation and undermining the founda- 
 tions of family morality (Hos. iv. 14). And Jeremiah 
 shows true insight into the nature of religion when he 
 emphasises the essential incongruity between the in- 
 herent sensuousness of the false worship to which his 
 people were addicted and the ethical motives of love 
 and trust and gratitude which the right relation of 
 Israel to Yahwe demanded. 
 
 3. A third characteristic of the popular religion is 
 what may be described as Double-mindedness: i.e. an 
 uneasy consciousness on the part of the people that the 
 god of their habitual worship was somehow distinct 
 from the God they ought to serve; and in consequence 
 a vacillating attitude in their religious professions. We 
 have seen that the nominal identification of Yahwe with 
 the Baals could not altogether obscure the knowledge 
 that they stood for irreconcileable principles; and it is 
 plain from this chapter that even so late as the time of 
 Jeremiah a dim perception of the antithesis existed in 
 the mind of the people. They followed the Baal religion 
 from inclination, but with a bad conscience, and with 
 a sense that it did not suffice for all their needs as a 
 nation (vv. 26, 27): 
 
 As a thief is ashamed when he is caught 
 So is Israel's house ashamed;
 
 70 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 Who say to a tree 'Thou'rt my father,' 
 
 And to a stone 'Thou hast brought me forth.' 
 
 For their back they have turned to Me, 
 And not their face; 
 
 But in time of their trouble they'll say 
 'Arise, Thou, and save us.' 
 
 That is to say, at ordinary times they buried their faith 
 in Yahwe beneath a mass of grovelling superstitions; 
 but in times of national distress, such as drought or 
 famine or the threat of invasion, they sought Him 
 consciously, and with some apprehension of His true 
 character. Their demeanour under the censure of the 
 prophets was a strange mixture or alternation of self- 
 deception, defiance and despair. When taxed with de- 
 fection from the national religion, and with having 
 forfeited all right to be considered Yahwe's people, 
 they would say 'I have not sinned* (v. 35), or 'I have 
 not gone after the Baals' (v. 23), meaning 'I have not 
 forsaken the worship of Yahwe *.' When confronted with 
 the moral requirements of Yahwe they would have none 
 of Him: 'We roam at large; we come no more to Thee' 
 
 1 Duhm argues acutely for the omission of the words 'I have not 
 gone' in v . 23 as metrically superfluous, and as expressing a sentiment 
 which the people could not possibly entertain : they knew well enough 
 that they had gone after the Baals, but what they deny is that they are 
 thereby disqualified for the worship of Yahwe. The distinction is perhaps 
 too subtle. The omission of the words yields at the best an ambiguous 
 pregnant construction: 'I have not defiled myself (by going) after the 
 Baals'; which may mean either (i) 'I have not so far defiled myself as 
 to go after the Baals,' or (2), as Duhm interprets, 'My going after the 
 Baals has not defiled me.' But surely from the standpoint of ancient 
 religion the conscious recognition in worship of other gods must have 
 implied infidelity to Yahwe? The real difference between the people 
 and the prophet is that they 'emphasised the destination, he the quality 
 of their worship' (Peake). It is quite true that in v. 25 they announce 
 their determination to go after strangers; but that confession falls into 
 line with v. 31, and expresses a mood which cannot by any possibility 
 be reconciled with that of vv. 22, 23.
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 71 
 
 (i?. 31). Most pathetic of all is their despairing answer 
 to His gracious invitation to return ere it be too late: 
 * It is hopeless ! No ! for I have loved strangers and after 
 them I must go' (v. 25). No doubt these inconsistent 
 utterances express dramatically Jeremiah's own view of 
 the people's state of mind; but none the less they reflect 
 conflicting aspects of that 'halting between two opinions' 
 (i Kings xviii. 21) which had marked the popular 
 religion through all its history. Jeremiah would end it 
 by stripping it of all pretension to be the religion of 
 Israel: 'Where are thy gods whom thou hast made for 
 thyself? Let them arise, if they can save thee in thy 
 time of trouble!' (v. 28). 
 
 4. Lastly the prophet characterises the prevailing 
 religion as an Unreality. As ostensible worship of Yahwe 
 it is unreal, because it establishes no contact with Him 
 as a moral Being; as Baal-worship it is unreal, because 
 the Baals are not real deities, but figments of the 
 imagination. Israel has foolishly 'exchanged its glory 
 for that which does not profit' (i>. 1 1). And where the 
 object of religion is unreal the subject becomes unreal 
 also: 'They followed after vanity and became vain' 
 (v. 5). They neither worshipped a real God, nor 
 worshipped with their real selves. That is the most 
 distinctive point in Jeremiah's analysis of religious ex- 
 perience. The principle that the worshipper is assimilated 
 to that which he worships had been enunciated by 
 Hosea in a more obvious fashion when he wrote ' They 
 became an abomination, like that which they loved' 
 (Hos. ix. 10). Jeremiah's thought goes deeper. The 
 Baals are not merely abominations but nonentities, and 
 'they that trust in them are like to them* (Ps. cxv. 8, 
 cxxxv. 1 8), because a life devoted to such service receives 
 no reinforcement from the one real and unfailing Source 
 of spiritual succour and energy. This conviction of the 
 unreality of all religions save one, of all gods but Yahwe
 
 72 THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL [CH. 
 
 finds its classical expression in one of the most memor- 
 able of all Jeremiah's utterances (v. 1 3) : 
 
 Two evils have My people committed: 
 
 Me they have forsaken, a fount of living water, 
 
 To hew for themselves cisterns - 
 Broken cisterns, that hold no water. 
 
 I cannot leave this subject without a word on the 
 allegorical framework in which the argument is cast. 
 Plainly, the maxim that you cannot draw an indictment 
 against a nation finds no countenance here. It is pre- 
 cisely to a nation, and to individuals only as members 
 of that nation, that Jeremiah's remonstrance is addressed. 
 The truth underlying this representation is one that is 
 difficult to state without exaggeration on one side or 
 another. The treatment of Israel as a unity, personified 
 as an individual mind, capable in relation to God of 
 all the wealth of personal thought and emotion, is 
 unfamiliar to our individualistic manner of thinking. 
 The idea is often expressed by saying that in the pro- 
 phetic theology the 'religious unit' is not the individual 
 soul but the community; and that is undoubtedly true 
 so far as it goes. The object of Yahwe's love and care 
 is the nation of Israel; the great revealing acts through 
 which His character is known are His providential 
 dealings with the people as a whole. But this is not to 
 say that all religion is resolved into acts of corporate 
 worship, that there was no such thing as personal piety, 
 nor any belief in a divine providence watching over the 
 individual life. It means simply that to the Israelite the 
 consciousness of his nationality was an integral element 
 of his faith in God, and that every act of personal 
 devotion was sustained by the sense of 'solidarity' with 
 the people which Yahwe had made His own. Thus far 
 the personification of Israel as the object of Yahwe's 
 regard is intelligible. It is when we turn to the subjective
 
 iv] THE TWO RELIGIONS OF ISRAEL 73 
 
 side of the relationship that the inadequacy of the con- 
 ception begins to be felt. For the response to Yahwe's 
 love could only come from the hearts of individuals, 
 and the rejection of Him was equally an attitude of the 
 individual mind. The nation, in short, was not like 
 Wordsworth's cloud, that 'moveth altogether if it move 
 at all ' ; the unity of the national consciousness existed 
 only in the poetic imagination of the prophet and the 
 antique mind in general. The personification of the 
 nation as an ideal personality thus involves an ambiguity 
 which was incidental to a transition stage of religious 
 experience. It may be regarded as an attempt to express 
 personal religion in terms of national religion. Jeremiah 
 (like Hosea before him) virtually, though perhaps not 
 consciously, transcends the common level of the Old 
 Testament religion. It is his own personal knowledge of 
 God which he reads into the relation between Israel 
 and Yahwe, and is the standard by which he judges the 
 actual religion of his people.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE 
 
 AC the point we have now reached in the examina- 
 tion of Jeremiah's early prophecies there arises a 
 question of great importance for the understanding of 
 the spirit and aim with which he entered upon his work. 
 Was he sustained at this time by the hope that by his 
 preaching the people would be turned from their evil 
 ways, and that the judgment which he announced might 
 be averted by an act of national repentance ? Or was he 
 from the first possessed by the conviction, which he 
 certainly felt in later years, that the breach between 
 Yahwe and Israel was irreconcileable, and that the doom 
 of the nation was inevitable? In the searching criticism 
 of the popular religion which we have just considered 
 there seems to be nothing which points decisively to 
 one of these conclusions rather than the other. The 
 threat of punishment is there; but it is expressed with 
 a certain forbearance, and in a tone which does not 
 exclude the hope of a national conversion. That possi- 
 bility is discussed in the third chapter of the book; and 
 there, if anywhere, we may expect to find an answer to 
 the question which has just been stated. 
 
 The question, however, concerns not Jeremiah alone, 
 but all the prophets. It is one of those general problems 
 of prophecy which have always been a subject of con- 
 troversy, and on which extreme views are maintained 
 by the advocates of opposing tendencies. It may be 
 well, therefore, before proceeding to the consideration 
 of Jeremiah's earlier attitude, to look at the broader 
 issue which is implicit in the nature of Old Testament 
 prophecy as a whole.
 
 CH. v] CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE 75 
 
 I 
 
 The general problem arises on the question whether 
 the prophets' announcements of doom were made con- 
 ditionally or absolutely. It is clear that the prophets 
 were not mere soothsayers, uttering Cassandra-like 
 auguries of impending disaster; they were preachers of 
 righteousness, and the burden of their preaching was a 
 summons to public repentance and reformation. So 
 much is admitted on all hands. But does not this imply 
 that their predictions of judgment were relative to the 
 response which the people might make to their appeal ? 
 For what purpose could the threat of punishment be 
 introduced into a call to conversion if not to point out 
 the consequences that would follow persistent rebellion ? 
 Must it not be essentially the presentation of an alterna- 
 tive: 'if ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat the good 
 of the land, but if ye refuse and rebel ye shall be 
 devoured by the sword* (Isa. i. I9f.)? It would thus 
 appear that the prophet's certainty of the event could 
 not be a mathematical certainty, like that of an as- 
 tronomer predicting an eclipse, but a moral certainty 
 of Yahwe's purpose in relation to the present state of 
 the people, qualified by the conviction that if the people 
 would turn, Yahwe would change His purpose from 
 judgment to mercy. But then, on the other hand, if the 
 incidence of the judgment depends on human freedom, 
 what becomes of the prediction? 'A hypothetical pre- 
 diction,' says Smend, 'is a contradiction in terms, as if 
 one should speak of "wooden iron" 1 .' And does it not 
 belong to the essence of prophecy to survey the future 
 with a vision from which contingency is excluded, and 
 to declare a divine purpose which is fixed and irre- 
 versible? 'I have spoken and will not repent: I have 
 purposed and will not turn from it' (Jer. iv. 28). 
 
 The conflict of opinion on this matter is very pro- 
 1 Alttestamentliche Rcligionsgeschichte, p. 191.
 
 76 CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE [CH. 
 
 nounced; and it goes back to a difference of emphasis 
 on the two aspects of the prophetic consciousness which 
 were distinguished at the beginning of the previous 
 chapter. If we suppose that the prophet's certainty of 
 an impending crisis came to him as an immediate pre- 
 sentiment of the trend of events, we should naturally 
 hold that it would not be affected by any change in the 
 mind of the people, and his prediction would be absolute 
 and unconditional. If on the other hand the announce- 
 ment of judgment rested entirely on moral grounds we 
 might conclude that the prophet's outlook would vary 
 with the religious attitude of the people, and that he 
 would labour to bring them to repentance with the hope 
 of averting the judgment. We find accordingly that on 
 one side it is maintained that the pre-exilic prophets 
 always looked forward to the catastrophe as inevitable. 
 Their prevision of calamity was an immediate presenti- 
 ment of the fact itself, and not an inference from the 
 law of retribution; hence the certainty of their predic- 
 tions is unaffected by the popular reception of their 
 message. The call to repentance was not seriously 
 meant 1 . No doubt the prophets believed that if the 
 nation were to repent Yahwe would stay His avenging 
 hand; but they were convinced in their hearts that the 
 people would not and could not repent, and the mere 
 theoretic possibility of such a change did not in the 
 least disturb their inward confidence that the fate of the 
 nation was sealed. On the other side it is argued, with 
 perhaps less rigour, that however confidently the 
 prophets may at times express themselves however 
 unqualified their predictions may be in form the 
 element of contingency is always present in intention, 
 the very object of the predictions being to bring about 
 the change of heart which would render the judgment 
 unnecessary. 
 
 1 Smend, I.e.
 
 v] CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE 77 
 
 Of these opposite theories it may be truly, if tritely, 
 said that each is right in what it affirms but wrong in 
 what it denies. It is true that the prophets utter un- 
 qualified predictions of the doom of their nation, and it 
 is also true that they hold out the hope of salvation on 
 condition of genuine repentance. But it is arbitrary to 
 assert that either of these attitudes represents their real 
 mind, and that the other is merely a rhetorical expression 
 of passing reflexions which do not belong to the sub- 
 stance of their message. Of the two extreme views that 
 which insists on the categorical nature of prediction 
 seems to err most widely in this respect. Although there 
 is an absolute element in prophecy, we have no right 
 to identify the prophetic consciousness with this side of 
 their teaching exclusively, and maintain (as is done by 
 Smend) that the note of warning and the call to repent- 
 ance lie outside the strictly prophetic function, and are 
 an irrelevant outflow of purely human feeling, or a way 
 of bringing home to the people their responsibility for 
 the doom which is irreversibly decreed against them. 
 But it is equally illegitimate to hold that the absolute 
 element can be eliminated from prophecy, as if its only 
 meaning were to frighten the people into a sense of the 
 danger that threatened them because of their sins. It 
 may be, as Dr Davidson said, ' a very delicate operation 
 to strike the balance. . .between the moral element which 
 introduced contingency into the prophecy, and the 
 absolute element which lay in it as a prediction 1 .' But 
 at least we must recognise that both elements exist side 
 by side in the prophetic writings, though we may not 
 be able to see how the two were combined in the minds 
 of the prophets themselves. We may easily be mistaken 
 in framing rigid generalisations on the phenomenon of 
 prophecy, forgetting that the name prophecy is but an 
 abstraction from the activity of the men whom we call 
 1 Old Testament Prophecy^ p. 251.
 
 78 CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE [CH. 
 
 the prophets, and that each prophet has his own indi- 
 vidual character and point of view. We should be 
 prepared to find, not only that one prophet differs from 
 another in the emphasis which he lays on the two 
 aspects of his mission, but also that the same prophet 
 may vary his attitude at different periods of his life. 
 The only safe procedure is to examine the oracles of 
 each prophet separately, and try to determine whether 
 at a particular time he did or did not entertain the hope 
 that the threatened judgment might be averted. And 
 our present concern is with Jeremiah 1 . 
 
 Now, Jeremiah's later attitude on this matter presents 
 difficulties which we are not yet in a position to consider. 
 We find many utterances which suggest that he regarded 
 the doom of the nation as inevitable. We find other 
 passages which appear to imply that the aim of all his 
 work was to turn the people from their evil ways, so 
 that Yahwe's wrath might be averted from them (see 
 vii. 57, xxv. 5, 6, xxvi. 3, xxxvi. 2-7, etc.; and cf. 
 xviii. 712). It is noteworthy, however, that in passages 
 of this kind there is nothing that amounts to a positive 
 expectation that the result will be such as his heart 
 desired; and hence we might conclude that his funda- 
 mental attitude was one of resignation to the irrevocable 
 decree of God. The question now before us is whether 
 
 1 The questions touched upon in the above paragraphs are fully dis- 
 cussed by Giesebrecht (Berufsbegabung, pp. 7989, 113 ff.), who while 
 admitting that prediction is essentially 'apodictic,' protests strongly 
 against the one-sided disparagement of the ethical element in prophecy 
 by Smend. On the other side see Buttenwieser (The Prophets, etc , pp. 
 176 ff.), whose view appears to be that the prophets were so confident 
 of the final triumph of righteousness and so sure of the subservience of 
 present events to this great end that they did not trouble themselves 
 about the effect of their words on their immediate hearers, but announced 
 the doom of Israel simply as a necessary step towards the realisation of 
 their ideal. It would be more intelligible if this had been said of the 
 invitations to repentance!
 
 vj CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE 79 
 
 this was his attitude from the outset, or whether he 
 entered upon his work with a real and confident hope 
 that the people would respond to his message and repent 
 before judgment came on them to the uttermost. And 
 for an answer to that question we must turn, as I have 
 said, to an analysis of the third chapter of the book. 
 
 II 
 
 Unfortunately the composition of this chapter is one 
 of the most intricate of the many critical problems which 
 the book of Jeremiah presents, and no analysis that has 
 been given is completely satisfying. It deals throughout 
 with the possibility and the conditions of a reconciliation 
 between Israel and Yahwe, but the subject is looked at 
 from varying points of view, and there are many 
 evidences of discontinuity of treatment and differences 
 of date. Taking the chapter as it stands, we can distin- 
 guish four main sections; and the general sequence of 
 thought is as follows. 
 
 i. In vv. 15 the question of a possible reunion of 
 Israel and Yahwe is raised in the most direct and explicit 
 fashion. Judged by human analogies it must appear an 
 utter impossibility. Israel is the divorced wife of Yahwe,. 
 she has gone astray after many lovers, and if law and 
 custom forbid remarriage to a woman who has been 
 united to a second husband, how much less can Yahwe 
 receive back one whose shame has been published on 
 the hill-tops and by the wayside! No hypocritical 
 phrases of endearment can atone for such infamous 
 conduct. That is the gist of the section. To what con- 
 clusion does it point? Is it that the human analogy holds 
 good and is decisive that there can be no reunion 
 between Yahwe and Israel : or is it that this thing which 
 is impossible with men is possible with God and in His 
 great mercy may be realised ? On the former alternative 
 the argument is closed and the passage requires no
 
 8o CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE [CH. 
 
 sequel; on the latter a sequel is necessary, and the 
 question is where we are to find it. 
 
 ii. The next section, w. 613, is obviously not the 
 original continuation of w. 1-5. It is marked off by a 
 separate heading from what precedes; it is in prose 
 style; and the allusions make it clear that if written by 
 Jeremiah at all it belongs to the post-Deuteronomic 
 period of his ministry. It is almost certain that it has 
 been inserted in this place by an editor because of an 
 accidental coincidence of subject with w. 1-5. In any 
 case it starts a new train of thought, contrasting Yahwe's 
 relations and feelings towards the sister kingdoms of 
 Israel and Judah, both married to Yahwe, but the one 
 already banished for her infidelity, the other, though 
 the more sinful of the two, still in His house. Thus the 
 ideal unity of Israel, which is maintained throughout 
 ch. ii, is conceived as broken up, and in the closing 
 invitation (vv. 12, 13) the hope of restoration is held 
 out to the northern Israelites alone (but see the notes on 
 pp. 8 1, 83 below). 
 
 iii. In w. 1418 we have a section which is now 
 universally recognised by scholars as foreign to the 
 context. It consists of a series of detached oracles loosely 
 strung together, and inserted here because of affinity 
 of subject with the main theme of the chapter. It has a 
 certain editorial fitness in its present position inasmuch 
 as it speaks of a restoration of both Israel and Judah 
 from captivity, and brings the whole nation once more 
 within the scope of the promise of forgiveness which 
 follows. But that is evidently a post-exilic point of view, 
 and it is doubtful if the section contains any genuine 
 words of Jeremiah at all. These verses must therefore 
 be left out of account when we seek to recover the 
 original connexions of thought in ch. iii. 
 
 iv. The chapter reaches a magnificent climax in w. 
 19-25. From the bare heights which had been the
 
 v] CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE 81 
 
 scenes of their idolatrous worship, the prophet hears 
 the bitter weeping of the children of Israel, convinced 
 at last of their sin in forsaking the Lord their God. He 
 hears the voice of Yahwe inviting them to return, and 
 assuring them of His readiness to heal their back- 
 slidings. The appeal finds an immediate response in the 
 heart of the people : * Yea, we come to Thee, for Thou 
 art our God.' Renouncing the vain religion of Baal 
 which had brought them to ruin, they cast themselves 
 in penitence and shame upon the mercy of Him who is 
 the Saviour of Israel. 
 
 Now the question on which the attention of recent 
 commentators has mostly been concentrated is whether, 
 after the removal of vv. 1418, vv. 19 ff. are the con- 
 tinuation of vv. 613 or (omitting 6 18) of vv. i $. 
 If the former view be correct, the last section simply 
 expands in a highly dramatic form the invitation to the 
 northern Israel already expressed in vv. 12, 13. If on 
 the other hand the connexion goes back to v. 5, we 
 have here the answer to the question propounded in 
 the opening section of the chapter: viz. the possibility 
 of a reconciliation of the whole nation of Israel to its 
 divine Husband 1 . 
 
 A good deal can be said on both sides of this question, 
 and much acute reasoning on opposite sides will be 
 found in the commentaries of Giesebrecht and Cornill; 
 but the result is indecisive. As regards suitability of 
 connexion there is little to choose between the three 
 
 1 The sequence of thought is not greatly affected by Duhm's retention 
 of lib, 13, as the original transition from v. 5 to v. 19. He holds that 
 the allegory of vv. 6-rr is a spurious interpolation, and that 12 a was 
 inserted by a redactor under the false impression that in what follows 
 Israel means North Israel. Erbt, while agreeing in the main, argues that 
 by the excision of this clause ' Go and proclaim these words northward ' 
 Duhm removes the very thing that misled the redactor into thinking 
 that North Israel is addressed in what follows; but his own explanation 
 is so unnatural as to deprive his objection of all practical value. 
 
 S.P.R. 6
 
 82 CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE [CH. 
 
 views: that vv. 1925 are the sequel to w. 15, that 
 they continue w. 6-13, or that v. 5 is linked to 19 ff. 
 by 12 ^, 13. No theory yields an unexceptionable 
 sequence. In favour of a reference to North Israel is the 
 circumstance that Jeremiah's hope for the future seems 
 always to attach itself to that part of the nation which 
 had passed through the fire of judgment. It was so at 
 a later time when he contrasted the bright future in 
 store for the exiles in Babylon with the fate of the 
 remnant left in Palestine (see pp. 2 5 1 f. below); and again 
 still later when for a brief space he cherished the dream 
 that the poverty-stricken settlement at Mizpah would 
 prove the nucleus of the new people of God (pp. 276f.).. 
 Now in his early years the northern kingdom had 
 suffered the calamity which the prophets had foretold; 
 and it would harmonise with Jeremiah's interpretation 
 of the ways of God that he should have a message of 
 immediate consolation for the exiled Israel from which 
 Judah was as yet excluded. There is, however, nothing 
 to suggest that this distinction was in the prophet's 
 mind except the problematical connexion of vv. [i2<, 
 13], 1925 with W. 6 n, which involves the equally 
 doubtful assumption that w. 6 1 1 were written by 
 Jeremiah. If this passage be genuine it clearly belongs 
 to a time subsequent to the Deuteronomic reformation 
 (see v. 10); and reflexion on the issue of that movement 
 might naturally have suggested the contrast between 
 the open profligacy of Israel and the feigned loyalty of 
 Judah. But the allegorical treatment of the theme, and 
 the whole style of the passage are very unlike Jeremiah; 
 and the resemblances to Ezekiel (xvi. 44 F., xxiii.) are 
 sufficiently striking to warrant a conjecture that the 
 working up of the idea is due to an editor, who wrote 
 the verses as an introduction to oracles which seemed 
 to contemplate a return of the northern tribes from 
 captivity. And even if Jeremiah composed the allegory,
 
 v] CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE 83 
 
 its connexion with the promises that follow can hardly 
 be original. It is difficult to conceive that with his pro- 
 found insight into the nature of religion he could have 
 seen any ground of hope for the restoration of Israel in 
 the more aggravated guilt of Judah. 
 
 Apart from w. 6 n, or 613, it would probably 
 never have occurred to any modern reader that w. 
 1925 refer to North Israel exclusively. Some have 
 argued that the consistent use of the name 'Israel 1 ' 
 lends support to this view; but that impression does 
 not appear to be borne out by the usage of Jeremiah. 
 There is no difficulty in supposing that the name is 
 used, as throughout ch. ii, of Israel as a whole, 
 with perhaps a contemporary application to Judah as 
 the residuary legatee of the national inheritance. Simi- 
 larly, the 'lovely land* of v. 19 is more naturally under- 
 
 1 Cf. 'Israel,' iii. [12] 23, [iv. i]; 'sons of Israel,' iii. 21; 'house of 
 Israel,' iii. 20. It is difficult to make out Jeremiah's own usage of these 
 terms from the mass of editorial matter which is spread over the book, 
 but for our present purpose it is sufficiently illustrated by the following 
 facts. Confining ourselves to passages which may reasonably be ascribed 
 to him, and whose text is fairly certain, we find (i) that the expression 
 'sons of Israel' is not elsewhere used by Jeremiah himself (except possibly 
 in rvi. 14 [= xxiii. 7], where it describes the people as a whole); so that 
 no inference can be drawn from its isolated occurrence in iii. 21. 
 (2) 'House of Israel' is generally coupled with 'house of Judah,' in 
 which case of course it denotes North Israel (v. u, xi. 10, 17, xiii. n, 
 xxxi. 3 1); standing alone it is never used of North Israel exclusively, but 
 either of all Israel (ii. 4, ix. 25, xxxi. 33), or with special reference to 
 Judah (ii. 26, v. 1 5, xviii. 6). (3) 'Israel' means North Israel in vii. 12, 
 xxiii. 13 (and of course in iii. 6 ii); it means the whole nation in the 
 very frequent title 'God of Israel,' and in ii. 3, xii. 14, xiv. 8, xvii. 13, 
 xxix. 23 : in ii. 14, vi. 9, xviii. 13 it is applied to Judah as the surviving 
 representative of the historic nation. In xxxi. 2, 4, 9, 21, which I assign to a 
 late period of Jeremiah's life (see Ch. xvi), ' Israel' undoubtedly includes 
 the northern tribes; but that it refers to them alone is not clear: these poems 
 seem to contemplate a return of the whole family from exile. The evi- 
 dence therefore does not seem to establish even a presumption in favour 
 of the theory that vv. 19-2 5 speak of the conversion of the Ten Tribes. 
 
 62
 
 84 CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE [CH. 
 
 stood of Canaan as a whole than of either division of 
 it 1 . And the allusions to the 'bare heights' in v. 21 and 
 the 'revelry of the mountains' in v. 23 presuppose a 
 people resident in the land and praying to Yahwe from 
 the sites of their former idolatrous worship (cf. ii. 20, 
 iii. 2, 6). The most probable conclusion is that w. 2125 
 are an independent poem, having no literary connexion 
 with either iii. 15 or 6 1 1, but dealing with the same 
 situation as the second chapter, and belonging like it 
 to the early period when Jeremiah's thinking was 
 strongly coloured by the influence of Hosea. 
 
 If these conclusions be right, the closing verses of 
 ch. iii must be read as a confession put into the 
 mouth of Israel in its ideal unity, as the unfaithful 
 spouse of Yahwe, convinced at last of her guilt and 
 folly. On any view the description is an ideal one; for 
 we may be sure that no such spontaneous cry of peni- 
 tence as is described in the following lines ascended 
 from the high places of Judah in the lifetime of Jeremiah 
 (yv. 12, 13, 2125): 
 
 i20' Return, t hou truant Israel, 
 
 To Me,' saith Yahwe; 
 * I will not frown on you, 
 i2&jr or gracious am I, 
 
 I grudge not alway. 
 
 1 It might be urged that the promise of the land assumes that the 
 people addressed was deprived of its land, which was true of North 
 Israel but not of Judah in the time of Jeremiah. But the only thoroughly 
 natural reference of v. 19 is either to the Exodus period, before Israel 
 had obtained possession of Canaan, or the Exile after it had lost it. If 
 the first suggestion be admissible we might find an appropriate place 
 for the verse after ch. ii. 1-3. Apart from metrical irregularities 
 (which are not irremediable) it would form a suitable third stanza to the 
 poem with which that chapter opens (p. 64 above). It must have been 
 inserted here because of the phraseological resemblance to iii. 4, which 
 is an additional reason for relegating vv. 6 18 to a later stage of the 
 redaction. V. 20, with the 2nd pers. plu., is another isolated fragment; 
 and both these verses must be removed from their connexion with 2 1 ff.
 
 v] CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE 85 
 
 I 3'Only acknowledge thy guilt, 
 
 Thy revolting from Yah we thy God, 
 In yielding thyself to strangers 
 Under every green tree 1 .* 
 
 21 Hark! from the bare heights is heard 
 
 The wailing of Israel's sons; 
 For on crooked ways they have gone, 
 And forgotten Yahwe their God. 
 
 22 'Return, O wayward children; 
 
 I will heal your waywardness.' 
 ' Lo, we come to Thee, 
 For Thou art our God. 
 
 2 3' Surely the hills are a fraud 
 
 The noise on the mountains; 
 Surely in Yahwe our God 
 Is Israel's succour. 
 
 2 4 ' But the Baal has devoured 
 Our fathers' substance 
 Their flocks and their herds, 
 Their sons and daughters. 
 
 2 S'We will lie down in our shame, 
 
 Our disgrace shall enfold us; 
 For against our God we have sinned 
 From our youth until now.' 
 
 The whole tone of these verses is opposed to the idea 
 that they represent one of those sporadic fits of shallow 
 repentance and unreal conversion which were character- 
 istic of the popular religion of Israel in times of public 
 distress (ii. 27). It has been suggested, however, that 
 Jeremiah here adopts the form of the Temple liturgy 
 used on such occasions, in order to impress on his 
 hearers the necessity for a sincere confession of guilt 
 
 ' For "J^Tf Du. reads *V2Ttil 'thy knees.' The last clause of the 
 p. is omitted.
 
 86 CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE [CH. 
 
 and renunciation of Baal-worship, as conditions of a 
 true reconciliation with Yahwe 1 . The theory does 
 justice to the seriousness of the prophet's appeal; but it 
 is difficult to see why one with Jeremiah's gifts of 
 imagination and poetic expression should resort to so 
 conventional a method of conveying his message. An 
 analogy from Hosea suggests a more attractive explana- 
 tion. The book of Hosea closes in ch. xiv with an 
 address to Israel which has a close resemblance to the 
 passage before us. In both we have the invitation to 
 repentance; in both the requirement of confession and 
 the offer of pardon; and in both, dramatically expressed, 
 the response of the nation to Yahwe's appeal: the 
 phrase 'I will heal [their] your backsliding[s]' occurs 
 almost verbatim in both. Is it too bold a conjecture that 
 Jeremiah was familiar with this chapter of Hosea, and 
 that his faith in the restoration of his people took its 
 direction from the words of his predecessor ? To whom, 
 then, does Hosea hold out the promise of reconcilia- 
 tion ? Not to a people already in exile; for it is practically 
 certain that he did not live to see the captivity of the 
 northern kingdom. On the other hand it cannot have 
 been to his contemporaries in the expectation that their 
 
 1 Erbt, Jeremia und seine Zeit, pp. 133 f.; similarly Schmidt, Die 
 grossen Propheten und ihre Zeit, pp. 229 f. Both these writers find the 
 divine answer to the people's confession in iv. I (Erbt) or iv. I, 2 
 (Schmidt) ; and it has been a common opinion that these two verses, in 
 whole or in part, form the necessary or appropriate conclusion to ch. iii. 
 I think it more probable that the connexion is redactional. That 
 Jeremiah wrote v. 2 in either the Massoretic or the LXX recension is 
 hardly possible; and yet the only natural construction of v. i is that 
 which takes it along with 2 a as the protasis to 2 b. To treat v. i as a 
 complete and independent sentence 'If thou wilt turn, Israel, saith 
 Yahwe, to Me thou mayest turn; and if thou wilt remove thy abomina- 
 tions from before Me, then thou need'st not wander,' or some such 
 rendering has been shown by Cornill to be objectionable on both 
 formal and material grounds. He is thoroughly justified in rejecting 
 both verses.
 
 v] CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE 87 
 
 doom might be averted; for to Hosea the discipline of 
 exile was a clearly foreseen step in the process by which 
 Israel was to be brought to a knowledge of the things 
 that belonged to her peace (see Hos. ii. 14 ff., Hi.). 
 We must conclude that in the Epilogue of the book he 
 is looking beyond the judgment, or rather that he is 
 thinking of the nation as one through all the vicissitudes 
 of its history, indestructible by any political catastrophe, 
 ever living to the thought and love of Yahwe. It may 
 be the same with Jeremiah. The subjects of the repent- 
 ance delineated in ch. iii are neither Israel nor 
 Judah as separate political entities, but the sons of the 
 ideal Israel, once Yahwe's true and loyal bride, and 
 destined to be reunited to Him when she repents of 
 her sin and casts herself in shame and sorrow on His 
 infinite mercy. 
 
 It would thus appear that in ch. iii we find no 
 direct answer to the question with which we started. 
 The result we arrive at is consistent with the supposition 
 that Jeremiah in his early years hoped that the final 
 destruction of Israel would be averted by the penitence 
 of the men of Judah; but it is also consistent with the 
 view that from the first he saw the ruin of the State to 
 be inevitable. Strictly speaking that question was not 
 before his mind when he wrote this poem. We are led 
 to regard it as an ideal picture of national conversion, 
 setting forth the condition of restoration to Yahwe's 
 favour as a change of heart expressing itself in a cor- 
 porate act of confession in which the whole nation is 
 conceived as taking part. As such it is one of Jeremiah's 
 profoundest contributions to the theology of grace and 
 redemption. His thought still moves on the plane of 
 national religion. His whole view of the divine love and 
 tenderness and compassion is bound up with the con- 
 ception of Israel as the object of Yahwe's regard; his 
 gospel is one not for the individual but for the nation
 
 88 CALL TO NATIONAL REPENTANCE [CH. r 
 
 as a whole. It is probable that he had not yet begun to 
 reflect on the difficulty or impossibility of a decisive 
 change in the national mind without the mysterious 
 operation of divine power on the human will (see ch. 
 xxiv. 7); but the conviction remained with him to 
 the end that only by the salvation of Israel could 
 Yahwe's character be fully revealed, and His purpose 
 accomplished. And at no time of his life could he have 
 written a finer description of a truly penitent nation 
 than is contained in the verses on which our attention 
 has been concentrated.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 
 
 *" II ^HE Scythian terror which had overshadowed the 
 JL opening years of Jeremiah's ministry vanished as 
 suddenly as it had appeared; and the country settled 
 down to peaceful pursuits, with a fairer prospect of 
 prosperity than it had known since the days of Uzziah 
 and Jeroboam. But in the highest quarters of the land 
 a new spirit was at work, which was resolved that the 
 lesson of the late crisis should not be lost, and that the 
 national life should be purged, by force if need were, 
 from the religious and social abuses which had pro- 
 voked the anger of Yahwe. This movement took effect 
 in a series of drastic reforms enacted and enforced by 
 Josiah in the eighteenth year of his reign. 
 
 It may help us to realise something of the perturba- 
 tion caused by this revolutionary measure if we transport 
 ourselves in imagination to Anathoth, where we assume 
 that Jeremiah was still living, in comparative obscurity, 
 in the year 621 B.C. First of all, in the spring of that 
 year, a rumour reaches the village of the discovery in 
 the Temple of an ancient law-book, said to be that of 
 Moses, which had caused the gravest concern to the 
 king because of the glaring disparity between its re- 
 quirements and the existing state of things in matters 
 religious and moral. This is speedily followed by a 
 summons to the local elders to a great national con- 
 vention at Jerusalem at the approaching Passover season. 
 When the delegates return they have a thrilling story 
 to tell of a Passover such as had never been observed 
 in Israel before, of a Solemn League and Covenant
 
 90 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 entered into by the king and the heads of the people to 
 make the newly found law the basis of public religion, 
 and to extirpate everything inconsistent with it, of a 
 cleansing of the Temple from idolatrous emblems, the 
 ejection of sacred prostitutes and the whole crew of 
 diviners, astrologers and wizards from the Temple 
 precincts, and many other startling demonstrations of 
 reforming and iconoclastic zeal. Enough already to 
 rouse the misgivings of all lovers of the old order in 
 Anathoth! By and by the village is visited by a royal 
 commission with sufficient force to overpower resistance; 
 the edict proclaiming the new covenant is read, and 
 then the work of destruction is done on the local Bama 
 or 'high place,' where sacrifice to Yahwe is no longer 
 to be permitted. Something like this must have taken 
 place at every township throughout the country in that 
 memorable year; and we can faintly imagine the resent- . 
 ment and dismay of the populace when they saw their 
 holy places wrecked and profaned, their priests reduced 
 to beggary, and themselves denied the privilege of 
 access to Yahwe after the manner of their fathers. It 
 was a blow at the very life of the popular religion; 
 but though it felled the tree to the ground it could 
 not tear up the roots of custom and hallowed associa- 
 tion which had struck deep into the heart of the 
 people. 
 
 What was Jeremiah's attitude in this time of tension 
 and violent change ? That is the most difficult problem 
 of his biography, and one on which his modern bio- 
 graphers are sharply divided. It is necessary to deal 
 with the question somewhat fully, if not with much 
 hope of settling it, at least with a view to gaining a 
 truer appreciation of his character and work from a 
 consideration of the complex data which enter into the 
 problem. But in the first place we must try to under- 
 stand the spirit and aim of the reforming movement,
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 91 
 
 the motives which inspired it, and the forces which 
 carried it to a successful issue. 
 
 Three indisputable (though not quite undisputed) 
 facts form the starting-point of this inquiry : first, that 
 a radical reform of public worship was initiated in the 
 eighteenth year of Josiah (c. 621); second, that the pro- 
 gramme of the reform was a law-book alleged to have 
 been found in the Temple, and third that this law-book 
 is preserved in substance in the book of Deuteronomy. 
 Beyond these positions, which I must here assume as 
 established, we are in the region of more or less reason- 
 able conjecture. Uncertainty begins when we ask how 
 much of the present Deuteronomy belongs to the 
 original law-book which was the basis of the reform, 
 and how much was added afterwards. In my opinion 
 the most probable, though not the most prevalent, view 
 is that the original law-book consisted of what is called 
 the 'legislative kernel* of Deuteronomy (chs. xii 
 xxvi, apart from editorial expansions); that after the 
 reformation this was published for popular use in suc- 
 cessive editions, which were amalgamated and supple- 
 mented by later writers; until in the course of one or 
 two generations the book assumed substantially the 
 form in which we now possess it 1 . One result of this 
 theory is that it enables us to regard Deuteronomy as 
 the record of a great contemporary movement of thought 
 of the age in which Jeremiah lived. The new law, what- 
 ever be the date of its composition, fell like seed into 
 prepared soil; it crystallised ideals and convictions 
 which profoundly influenced the best mind of the 
 nation; it created a literature and a literary school which 
 dominated the theological development of the ensuing 
 century, which gave Judaism its first Bible, and made 
 its adherents once and for all a 'People of the Book.' 
 And it is with these contemporary influences quite as 
 1 See Steuernagel, Einleitung in das alte. Test., pp. 183 ff.
 
 92 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 much as with the original code itself that we have to do 
 when we discuss Jeremiah's relation to the Deutero- 
 nomic movement as a whole. 
 
 A much more vital question is that of the bona fides 
 of the parties more immediately responsible for the 
 promulgation of the law, especially Hilkiah the priest 
 and Shaphan the chancellor. Did Hilkiah really discover 
 an old book in some recess of the Temple, or did he 
 connive at a pious fraud in order to secure the more 
 ready acceptance of its authority ? To put it otherwise : 
 was the Law-book of 621 drawn up in the time of 
 Josiah by a band of reformers who sought in this way 
 to obtain legislative sanction for the ideal they had set 
 before them; or was the reformation wholly controlled 
 by the prescriptions of an ancient document which had 
 unexpectedly come to light? Here again I can only 
 express an opinion that the truth lies between two 
 extremes. The reformation of Josiah was not brought 
 about by the dead hand of written authority apart from 
 the living aspirations of the age; nor was the book a 
 contemporary production of the reform movement of 
 the reign of Josiah. A prophetic reforming party had 
 existed in the State since the days of Isaiah, and among 
 its cherished objects was a centralisation of cultus such 
 as had been attempted by Hezekiah. It would be an 
 interesting link in the history of this party if, as has 
 been surmised, the nucleus of Deuteronomy was the 
 programme of Hezekiah's reform, or even the royal 
 edict which set it in motion *. It would be easy to suppose 
 that this document was preserved in the Temple 
 archives, was afterwards expanded, and then lost sight 
 of till it was discovered in the course of Josiah's repairs 
 to the fabric. Although there are difficulties in that 
 precise hypothesis, there is none in believing that the 
 kernel of the book was composed by an adherent of the 
 
 1 Steuernagel, Die Entstehung dfs deut. Gesetzes (i 896), pp. 100, 112.
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 93 
 
 prophetic party, and was concealed in the Temple until 
 an opportunity should present itself to put it in force. 
 Some such hypothesis would enable us to understand 
 the immediate rally of the prophetic party to the newly 
 discovered law, without attributing deliberate dishonesty 
 to the principal personages in the transaction. I cannot 
 enter further on a discussion of the date of Deuteronomy 
 or of the suggestion that its public reception was due 
 to a pious fraud. It would not have been necessary to 
 say so much, were it not that some support for the 
 theory has been sought in the words of Jeremiah him- 
 self. 
 
 The general aim of Deuteronomy, as we see from 
 the circumstances of its introduction, was to secure the 
 continuance and prosperity of the Jewish State by an 
 effort to bring the national life into harmony with those 
 moral and religious conditions on which the favour of 
 Yahwe depended. To such an effort a variety of interests 
 lent their support in the age of Josiah. The reviving 
 spirit of nationality, due to the decline of the Assyrian 
 power and the hope of recovering political independ- 
 ence, welcomed the restoration of religion on a dis- 
 tinctively national basis, as opposed to the cosmopolitan 
 and syncretistic tendencies which had marked the period 
 of Assyrian domination. Another contributory influence 
 was the demand for just and humane treatment of the 
 poor and defenceless, which is so characteristic of 
 Hebrew legislation, and is strongly in evidence in the 
 law of Deuteronomy. But after all we cannot doubt that 
 the central impulse of the reformation was a genuine 
 interest in the religious life of the nation, and a desire 
 to realise the ideal of righteousness contained in the 
 teaching of the great prophets. The warnings and 
 denunciations of the prophets had so far penetrated the 
 conscience of the people as to produce a conviction that 
 many things in the life of Judah had to be changed
 
 94 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 before it could rely on the protection of Yahwe. The 
 prophetic conceptions of God as a perfectly righteous 
 and holy Being, and of religion as obedience to his 
 moral will, found inadequate, but still sincere, expres- 
 sion under the form of the Covenant, with its conditional 
 promises and threats, which is the embodiment of the 
 Deuteronomic idea. And that a profoundly religious 
 motive lay at the heart of the movement is shown by the 
 impressive inculcation in the book of whole-hearted 
 loyalty to Yahwe, the only God whom Israel may 
 serve, whose love to the fathers had called the people 
 into existence, and whose gracious providence had 
 endowed it with privileges such as no other nation 
 enjoyed. 
 
 Of the practical measures adopted by the reformers, 
 the most conspicuous, and the most far-reaching in its 
 consequences, was the centralisation of worship in 
 Jerusalem, with its negative counterpart in the sup- 
 pression of the provincial sanctuaries. It is very important 
 for the understanding of Jeremiah's possible attitude 
 to the movement to observe that in the view of the 
 Deuteronomists the centralisation of worship was not 
 an end in itself, but only a means to a higher end, 
 namely the purification of public religion from its 
 heathenish excesses, and the assertion of Yahwe's sole 
 claim to the nation's homage. The sacrificial and 
 ceremonial legislation of Deuteronomy, which many 
 modern critics find so obnoxious, is really a subordinate 
 element, amounting to little more than a regulation of 
 ancient usages too deeply bound up with the life and 
 thought of the people to be swept away by legal enact- 
 ment. It is sufficient to show that the promoters of the 
 reformation did not as practical men rise to the high 
 ethical conception of the prophets; but it is doing these 
 men an injustice to say that their whole view of religion 
 was vitiated by this compromise with existing customs
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 95 
 
 and ideas 1 . We must note, however, that two parties 
 were interested in the promotion of this particular 
 reform. One was the Temple priesthood, which with 
 all its lapses from the pure service of Yahwe had been 
 distinguished by a certain fidelity to the national 
 religious institutions and had already carried through 
 important measures of reform. The other was, as we 
 have seen, the prophetic party, which had kept alive 
 the ideals of Isaiah, and had never ceased to cherish 
 the hope of seeing Hezekiah's scheme of centralisation 
 brought to a successful issue. The goodwill of the 
 priesthood is demonstrated by the action of Hilkiah in 
 giving publicity to the new law-book; and the support 
 of the prophetic party may be inferred from the answer 
 of the prophetess Huldah to the king's anxious inquiry 
 (2 Kings xxii. 1520). How far the co-operation rested 
 on a common basis of principle may be doubtful. Even 
 if such a union existed prior to the reformation, it 
 carried the seeds of dissolution in its bosom. The 
 priesthood was interested chiefly in the positive idea of 
 centralisation, and was exposed to the temptation to 
 emphasise the ritual element of the law, to the neglect 
 of its moral requirements. The prophetically minded 
 were more concerned with the negative aspect, the 
 abolition of local cults, and could not acquiesce in any 
 undue exaggeration of ceremonial. But there was 
 another latent danger, to which men of both parties 
 were exposed, and which marked a line of cleavage 
 
 1 'The code of Deuteronomy .. .starts from the observation that it is 
 impossible to get rid of Canaanite elements of worship until sacrifice 
 and ritual observances are confined to one sanctuary.... From one point 
 of view the law of the single sanctuary seems a poor outcome for the 
 great work of Isaiah, and yet when it was construed in the way set forth 
 in Deuteronomy it implied a real step towards the spiritualisation of all 
 the service of God, and the emancipation of religion from its connection 
 with the land and holy places of Canaan.' W. Robertson Smith, The 
 Prophets of Israel, pp. 368 f.
 
 96 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 soon to emerge : the tendency to rest on the formal fact 
 of the covenant transaction as a sufficient pledge of 
 Yahwe's favour, while its ethical content was ignored. 
 And closely connected with this was the still more 
 insidious error of regarding external obedience to the 
 law, irrespective of the inner disposition of the heart, as 
 a satisfactory response to the will of Yah we. The germ of 
 hypocrisy is latent in every legal religion; and in the often 
 quoted words of Dr Davidson, ' Pharisaism and Deutero- 
 nomy came into the world the same day.' All this has 
 to be borne in mind as we now proceed to consider the 
 relation of Jeremiah to this many sided movement. 
 
 The first fact that strikes us is that Jeremiah's name 
 does not appear among the active promoters of the 
 reformation. To infer from this, or from the other fact 
 that he was not even consulted as to the authority of 
 the Law-book, that he was unsympathetic or hostile is 
 to stretch the argument from silence much too far. In 
 all probability he was still living in Anathoth, and his 
 influence did not extend beyond his native town. He 
 was not consulted simply because no one thought of 
 him as a person to be consulted. The tidings of what 
 had transpired in Jerusalem came upon him, as upon 
 all his neighbours, like a thunderclap. But we may be 
 sure that the event did not leave him unmoved. He 
 might approve the measures that had been taken, or he 
 might condemn them : a neutral onlooker he could not 
 be. This was the biggest effort that had ever been 
 made to bring the life of Israel into conformity with 
 the will of God; it dealt with evils which he himself 
 had denounced; and he could not avoid asking himself 
 whether the thing was of the Lord or of man. The 
 question what his judgment was covers many possi- 
 bilities. Did he accept the new Law as of divine author- 
 ity, or did he regard it as the work of well-meaning but
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 97 
 
 mistaken scribes ? Did he maintain a consistent position 
 on this matter throughout his life, or did his early 
 support of the movement give place, under the teaching 
 of experience, to an attitude of distrust and aversion ? 
 And if the latter was the fact, was his opposition 
 directed merely against the evil consequences which he 
 perceived to follow from the formal observance of the 
 Covenant, or against the whole idea of a covenant based 
 on a written code? Or, finally, did he sympathise with 
 the aim of the reformers, but object to the violent 
 methods by which they sought to attain it? 
 
 The answers to these questions naturally depend 
 largely on a -priori considerations drawn from the char- 
 acter of Jeremiah and the leading principles of his 
 teaching. But while it is impossible to exclude argu- 
 ments of that nature, it is an obvious dictate of sound 
 criticism to start from those utterances of Jeremiah 
 which have a direct bearing on the problem. The pre- 
 sumption for or against his having supported the 
 Deuteronomists can never be so strong as to bar a limine 
 examination of any passage which seems to yield evidence 
 on the one side or the other. Now there are just two 
 passages in the book in which it is thought that clear 
 and direct reference to Deuteronomy can be discovered : 
 ch. xi. 18 and ch. viii. 8. 
 
 i . The former passage (xi. I 8) contains two things : 
 first, a curse on the man who will not observe a certain 
 covenant (vv. 1-5), and secondly an injunction to 
 Jeremiah to preach this covenant in the capital and 
 provinces (vv. 68). That the reference in both is to 
 Josiah's Covenant is an opinion so firmly rooted, and 
 on the surface so plausible, that to the majority of 
 recent critics the only point worth discussing is whether 
 the verses are authentic words of Jeremiah or a legend 
 of later date. But when we examine the context closely 
 the reference to Deuteronomy is by no means so 
 
 S.P.R.
 
 98 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 certain as is commonly assumed. Let us look first at 
 w. 1-5. 
 
 The introduction (13 a) is a clumsy and unintelligible 
 piece of writing, and is evidently the result of repeated 
 and careless editing. Clearing up the text as best we 
 can, we may read as follows : 
 
 The word which came to me from Yah we: 'Cursed is he 
 who will not hear the words of this Covenant [which I enjoined 
 on your fathers at the time when I brought them out of the 
 land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying " Obey my voice, 
 and do according to all that I command you, and ye shall be to 
 me a people, and I will be to you a God; that I may confirm 
 the oath which I swore to your fathers, to give them a land 
 flowing with milk and honey," as at this day 1 ']. And I answered 
 and said 'Amen, Yah we!' 
 
 The initial difficulty here is the indefiniteness of the 
 expression 'this covenant.' What covenant? 'Un- 
 doubtedly,' say the commentators, 'Josiah's covenant! 
 There was no other of which the prophet or his hearers 
 could be thinking 2 .' But that does not meet the point. 
 
 1 The words in square brackets are made up of characteristic phrases 
 of Deuteronomy, and are in all probability a later expansion of the text. 
 See below. 
 
 * It is absurd to suppose that in the current language of the time 
 Josiah's law-book was always referred to as 'this covenant,' so that 
 wherever the phrase is used we are to understand that Deuteronomy is 
 meant. Nor is any support for this view to be found in the fact that in 
 2 Kings xxiii. 3 (cf. Deut. xxix. 8 [9]) the contents of the new law-book 
 are described in terms identical with those here employed: 'the words 
 of this covenant' (vv. 2, 3, 6, 8). For in the historical narrative the 
 reference of the demonstrative pronoun is, clearly determined by the 
 full description of the document in the previous verse: 'all the words of 
 the book of the covenant which was found in the house of Yahwe'; 
 whereas here it is precisely the absence of any antecedent which is the 
 cause of obscurity. The explanation is quite inadequate on the supposi- 
 tion that Jeremiah is the author, and even more so if we have to do with 
 the work of a late and ill-informed writer, whose Tendenz must have 
 led him to put Jeremiah's connexion with Deuteronomy beyond a
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 99 
 
 Even if we grant that as a matter of fact Deuteronomy 
 is meant, we still require an explanation of the manner 
 in which it is introduced as ' this covenant/ There are 
 two directions in which a solution may be sought. 
 
 (a) The most obvious solution is to discard the refer- 
 ence to Deuteronomy, and take 'this covenant' to mean 
 the covenant defined by the relative clauses which 
 follow: 'this covenant which I enjoined on your fathers 
 ...namely^ "Obey my voice, etc.'" Some such idea 
 appears to have been in Dr Davidson's mind (although 
 
 doubt. There is another point of some importance which is overlooked 
 by those who are satisfied with this interpretation of the phrase. The 
 original Deuteronomy did not give itself out as the basis of a covenant 
 made in the days of Moses. The only place in the book where this idea 
 explicitly occurs is xxviii. 69 [E.V. xxix. i] where a distinction is drawn 
 between a covenant in the land of Moab (which is of course Deutero- 
 nomic) and the covenant at Horeb. But ch. xxix is no part of the 
 original Deuteronomy; it appears to be the framework of a late separate 
 edition of the Law, and at all events was not written till after the Exile 
 (see A. F. Puukko, Das Deuteronomium, pp. 21620). The early 
 Deuteronomists know of only one Mosaic covenant, the covenant made 
 at Horeb, of which the basis was the Decalogue (Deut. v. 2 ff., ix. 9 ff.). 
 Deuteronomy itself is ostensibly a speech of Moses at the end of the 
 desert sojourn (i. 5, iv. i, 45 and passim), in which he expounds 
 certain ordinances delivered to him privately on the mount (v. 31); and 
 the only covenant- ever based on it is the national covenant in the 
 eighteenth year of Josiah. Bertholet has put forward the ingenious con- 
 jecture that in xxvi. 16-19 we have the ipsissima verba of the ratifying 
 formula recited on that occasion {Kurzer Hand-Commentar t pp. xxiv, 
 8 2) ; but even if that suggestion be regarded as too subtle, the verses do not 
 warrant the inference that a covenant transaction took place in the land 
 of Moab. Now the covenant spoken of in Jer. xi is one made with Israel 
 at the time of the Exodus from Egypt. To suppose, therefore, that 
 Deuteronomy is meant is to assume a departure from the proper Deutero- 
 nomic point of view which we cannot readily attribute to a con- 
 temporary like Jeremiah. The argument of course does not hold against 
 the opinion that the verses are spurious in whole or in part, for a late 
 writer would naturally adopt the view of Deut. xxviii. 69. But if we 
 accept the passage as genuine it becomes very difficult to think that 
 Deuteronomy would be described in the way here employed. 
 
 72
 
 ioo JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 he has not worked it out exegetically) when he wrote: 
 'Jeremiah may have sought to impress on men the 
 general idea of Deuteronomy, that of the covenant 
 between Yahwe and Israel, for this was his own idea in 
 another form; but a formal championship of Deuter- 
 onomy would have been very unlike him 1 .' That is to 
 say, what Jeremiah means by covenant is just the 
 fundamental principle of Old Testament religion, that 
 Yahwe is Israel's God and Israel Yahwe's people, and 
 that this relation is maintained on the condition of 
 obedience to the will of Yahwe in whatever way it may 
 be revealed. The conception might have been suggested 
 by Josiah's covenant; but here he abstracts from the 
 concrete instance, and sums up the essence of the 
 covenant relation in the words I have quoted. If this be 
 the right interpretation, the passage is not only no proof 
 that Jeremiah supported Deuteronomy, but may even 
 be regarded as a strong polemic against it 2 . But if we 
 accept this view it will be difficult to ascribe the passage 
 to Jeremiah at all. The accumulation of distinctively 
 Deuteronomic phrases and ideas in w. 4, 5, implies a 
 dependence on that book which savours strongly of 
 editorial workmanship. 
 
 (^) The other solution is one proposed by Erbt. It 
 starts from the reconstruction of a 'definite historical 
 situation ' as the background of the oracle. A suitable 
 occasion would be the solemn scene in Jerusalem 
 described in 2 Kings xxiii. i ff. the ratification of the 
 National Covenant, at which we may imagine that 
 Jeremiah was present; or the first proclamation of the 
 new law in the village of Anathoth. The young prophet 
 is stirred to the depths of his spirit by this great public 
 
 1 Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, n, 570 b. 
 
 * So Konig, who holds that Jeremiah here asserts the validity of the 
 Sinai-covenant (with the Decalogue) in opposition to Deuteronomy 
 (Gcschichte der Alttestamentlichen Religion, pp. 376 f.).
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 101 
 
 act of repentance and conversion to the pure service of 
 Yahwe as taught by the prophets. The conviction that 
 it was the will of God comes to him as an inward voice : 
 'Cursed be he who will not hear the words of this 
 covenant!' and the response of his conscience utters 
 itself in the audible exclamation, ' Amen, Yahwe ! ' On 
 this view we should omit the nearer specification of the 
 covenant in vv. 4, 5, as a Deuteronomistic amplification, 
 and let the 'this' refer to the law just read. The verses 
 would thus record a vivid momentary experience of the 
 prophet, in which he stands revealed as wholly in 
 sympathy with the aim of the Deuteronomic reformers. 
 The same method of excision is also applied by Erbt 
 to the following section, vv. 68; but here he has the 
 partial support of the LXX, which omits the whole of 
 vv. 7 and 8 with the exception of the words 'and they 
 did not' at the end. With this abbreviated text the 
 passage reads: 'And Yahwe said to me, "Proclaim all 
 these words in the cities of Judah and the streets of 
 Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant 
 and do them"; But they did them not 1 .' From these 
 verses it has often been inferred that Jeremiah's zeal in 
 the cause of reform led him to undertake an itinerant 
 mission round the cities of Judah to recommend 
 acceptance of the new law. Dr Davidson expresses the 
 opinion of many scholars when he pronounces such an 
 idea to be 'most improbable'; but short of denying the 
 authenticity of the entire passage, I do not see how it 
 can be got rid of, at least in the general sense of an 
 active public advocacy of the principles of the reforma- 
 tion. For the explanation of 'this covenant' (vv. 6, 8) 
 as meaning simply the formal idea of the covenant 
 without special reference to Deuteronomy (which might 
 suffice for vv. 35) cannot be applied to vv. 68. It is 
 
 1 The connexion is not altogether natural; and it is doubtful if in this 
 case the shorter text of the LXX is older than the Hebrew.
 
 102 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 true that in v. 7 the covenant idea appears to be viewed 
 as a continuous principle running through the whole 
 history of the nation, demanding obedience to a con- 
 tinuous revelation of the will of God through prophecy 
 (cf. vii. 25). But in v. 8 the clause 'I brought upon 
 them all the words of this covenant' must refer to a 
 particular document containing specific threats against 
 breaches of the covenant; and this could hardly be 
 anything else than the book of Deuteronomy. And since 
 v. 8 presupposes the exile, we must either delete it, 
 with v. 7, as a later addition, or reject the whole section 
 as spurious. 
 
 It is thus not easy to reach a positive conclusion as 
 to the real bearing of ch. xi on Jeremiah's relation 
 to Deuteronomy. So far as I can judge, it is only by 
 adopting some such theory as Erbt's that we can main- 
 tain the fundamental historicity of the narrative. Recent 
 critics have been far too ready to dismiss it as the base- 
 less fabrication of a later age, invoking the authority of 
 a great prophet in support of the book of Deuteronomy. 
 That view has very little probability. We have seen that 
 the language is too ambiguous to be effective for that 
 purpose; and besides we know of no circumstances in 
 which the authority of Deuteronomy was so much in 
 question as to call for any such expedient. There is no 
 doubt that the collected prophecies of Jeremiah passed 
 through the hands of the Deuteronomic school, and 
 were freely edited by them. His discourses have been 
 interpolated, amplified, in some instances rewritten. But 
 the deliberate invention of an incident which had no 
 point of contact in the authentic record of his life is a 
 procedure to which no assured parallel is found in the 
 book. We must at least believe that a trustworthy 
 tradition lies behind the passage in ch. xi; and the con- 
 clusion to which it naturally points is that Jeremiah was 
 at first strongly in favour of the law of Deuteronomy,
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 103 
 
 and lent his moral support to the reformation of 
 Josiah. 
 
 2. A much deeper issue is raised by the second 
 passage, ch. viii. 8 a remarkable verse, standing in 
 a remarkable connexion. The prophet has been de- 
 ploring the people's propensity to evil courses; and in 
 the preceding verse he has traced it to a deadening of 
 the religious instinct, that knowledge of God's will 
 which at an earlier time he had hoped to find at least 
 among the educated classes (v. 5): 'My people know 
 not the ethic of Yahwe' (viii. 7). Then he proceeds: 
 
 How can you say, 'We are wise, 
 
 And the Tord of Yahwe is with us'? 
 Why, mark you ! it has been turned to falsehood 
 
 By the false pen of scribes 1 ! 
 
 The suggestion that the verse expresses Jeremiah's 
 antipathy to Deuteronomy was first made by Prof. 
 Marti in 18892, an< ^ ^ nas received the imprimatur of 
 some of the foremost names in O.T. scholarship. This 
 is not surprising. In Jeremiah's time Deuteronomy was 
 the only written law which we can readily imagine to 
 have been the object of such religious confidence as is 
 described in the first half of the verse ; and that Tora 
 here means written law is so much the most natural 
 view that we need hardly consider possible alternatives. 
 It is noteworthy, too, that the peculiar claim to 'wisdom' 
 in virtue of the possession of the law finds an echo in 
 the book of Deuteronomy itself: 'For this is your 
 
 1 The last sentence might also be rendered 'The false pen of scribes 
 has made it in falsehood,' or even 'has wrought falsely,' or 'in vain' 
 (i Sam. xxv. 21). It is difficult to render the exact force of the com- 
 bination J"|,Dn ptf- pK expresses, as often, the reality, in contrast to 
 what is wrongly supposed: 'But lo! the fact is, etc.' (see Brown, 
 Driver, Briggs, Heb. Lex., s.v.). 
 
 2 Der Prophet Jeremia (not seen!). Also in his Geschlchte der 
 Israelitischen Religion (1897), p. 166.
 
 104 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 wisdom and discernment in the eyes of the peoples, 
 who shall hear of all these ordinances, and shall say, 
 Surely a wise and discerning people is this great nation ' 
 (Deut. iv. 6). Nor is it in the abstract impossible that 
 Jeremiah should have challenged its divine authority. 
 In short, that Marti's view can be read into the passage 
 is undeniable; and the only question is whether this be 
 the only admissible interpretation. Now, the second 
 half of v. 8, being the answer to the first, might mean 
 either that the people had not the true Tora of Yahwe 
 (in which case Deuteronomy is stigmatised as a fraud), 
 or that having it they are none the better, because it 
 had been so overlaid by scribal additions as to have lost 
 all value as an ethical standard. Hence several writers 
 hold that the reference is to tentative legislative essays 
 in the direction of the later Priestly Code, whose tend- 
 ency was to emphasise the ceremonial element in 
 religion, and enhance the prestige of the Temple and 
 the power of the priesthood. There are turns of expres- 
 sion in 8 b which favour this explanation. It might be 
 argued that the law in question is only said to have been 
 made into falsehood, not that it was false ab origine; and 
 again the indefiniteness of the phrase ' (many) a false 
 pen of scribes 1 ' points rather to a multifarious literary 
 activity than to the production of a single document. 
 
 At all events the evidence of deep-seated hostility to 
 Deuteronomy in viii. 8 is not so clear as to neutralise 
 the opposite impression we have derived from ch. xi. 
 And two additional considerations have to be borne 
 in mind, (i) Ch. viii. 8 represents a later probably 
 much later estimate of the movement than xi. i 8. 
 However radical Jeremiah's opposition at the later date 
 may have been, it will not follow that he had never held 
 a different view. It can only show that he was dis- 
 
 See Konig, op. cit. p. 325; and in Studien und Kritiken, 1 906, pp.
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 105 
 
 appointed with the spiritual fruits of the reformation, 
 and was led to revise his judgment on the instrument 
 by which it was effected. (2) Jeremiah is here concerned, 
 not directly with the contents of the law, but with its 
 indirect effect on the mind of the nation. 'The law is 
 good if a man use it lawfully.' He had looked on 
 Deuteronomy as setting forth a high ideal of national 
 life, and a means of accomplishing much-needed re- 
 forms: in that sense it was to him a word of God; and 
 he could say 'Amen' to the curse on him who refused 
 to obey it. But to the people it became a fetish, and its 
 possession a substitute for the inward knowledge of 
 God which then and always was to Jeremiah the 
 essence of religion. This is the error he is concerned to 
 expose; and to do so it was not necessary that he should 
 denounce the law root and branch as a product of 
 human deceit and imposture. It was enough to assert 
 that it had fallen into the hands of a professional class, 
 whose interest it was to 'develope' its teaching in a 
 direction which was foreign to its original spirit and 
 purpose. 
 
 This brings us to the heart of the subject. The dis- 
 inclination to admit even a temporary co-operation of 
 Jeremiah with the Deuteronomists rests less on the 
 exegesis of particular texts than on the broad ground 
 that his insight into the nature of religion makes it 
 inconceivable that he could ever have had any sym- 
 pathy with an attempt to convert the nation by a forcible 
 change in its forms of worship. He must have been 
 aware of the essential discordance between the spirit of 
 law and the spirit of prophecy, between the ideals of 
 the Deuteronomists and his own. Now, that is doubtless 
 true of the later Jeremiah. But is it necessary to suppose 
 that it was all clear to him from the outset? Had he 
 nothing to learn in the course of his life about the 
 inherent defects of a national religion, and the impossi-
 
 io6 JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY [CH. 
 
 bility of bringing about a national conversion by an 
 exercise of the authority of the State ? The difference 
 of principle was always there implicitly; but just as a 
 woman has sometimes to be engaged to a man before 
 she knows that she cannot marry him, so Jeremiah may 
 have had to go some way with the Deuteronomists in 
 order to discover that he was of a different spirit from 
 theirs. It does not detract from the greatness of the 
 prophet to think that his knowledge of religion was 
 acquired gradually as a result of the experience and 
 discipline of his life; and to my mind his mental develop- 
 ment is more intelligible if we assign an important 
 place in that experience to reflexion on the working of 
 the Deuteronomic covenant. 
 
 To sum up briefly our conclusions as to Jeremiah's 
 relation to Deuteronomy: Josiah's reformation found 
 him still a young, little known prophet, living quietly 
 at Anathoth. At first he espoused the cause of reform 
 with a zeal which drew down on him the deadly hatred 
 of his townsmen (see pp. iO9ff. below). At this time 
 Deuteronomy was to him simply the programme of a 
 great and beneficent reform; and while accepting it as 
 such he may not have given much thought to the con- 
 ception of religion which lay behind it. But very soon 
 its defects became apparent : its superficiality, its inability 
 to cope with prevalent immorality, and the surviving 
 tendencies to polytheism and superstition; and Jeremiah 
 began to suspect the inherent impotence of the legal 
 method of dealing with national sin. At a later time he 
 detected a worse evil in the new-born spirit of self- 
 righteousness based on a formal acceptance of the 
 Covenant and an outward compliance with its demands. 
 Against this spirit Jeremiah protested in the way we 
 have seen. He saw that the door was opened to a new 
 class of professional religionists, the scribes, in whose 
 hands religion was divorced from the essential and the
 
 vi] JEREMIAH AND DEUTERONOMY 107 
 
 spiritual, and resolved into a routine of sumptuous 
 ritual and priestly ceremony. 
 
 But we need not suppose that Jeremiah, any more 
 than Jesus and Paul, repudiated the law which was the 
 occasion of this evil, as in itself of no authority. And in 
 spite of differences there are close affinities between the 
 school of Deuteronomy and the teaching of Jeremiah. 
 The mere fact that the prophecies of Jeremiah were 
 edited by the Deuteronomic school shows that there 
 was no consciousness of antagonism between them. 
 Deuteronomy as well as Jeremiah insists on the need of 
 a circumcision of the heart (Jer. iv. 4; Deut. x. 16, 
 xxx. 6); and the author of the principal edition of 
 Deuteronomy the writer who more than any other 
 has stamped his individuality on the book inculcates 
 so earnestly the inwardness of true obedience as spring- 
 ing from love to God, that we can almost think of him 
 as a disciple of the prophet, or a Melancthon to his 
 Luther. Moreover the stedfast loyalty of the family of 
 Shaphan till the end of Jeremiah's life suggests that 
 he never broke openly with the reforming party 1 , and 
 certainly makes it extremely improbable that he had 
 ever denounced them as a clique of forgers and de- 
 ceivers. Inwardly, no doubt, he felt himself isolated 
 from them. He was driven in upon himself and back 
 upon God. He perceived ever more clearly that neither 
 law nor prophecy could reach the obdurate heart of the 
 people, or cure the 'perpetual backsliding* which made 
 a return to ' the ancient paths, the way of good ' a moral 
 impossibility. 
 
 1 See p. 278 below.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 
 
 WE have now entered upon the second period of 
 Jeremiah's career. The promulgation of the 
 Deuteronomic law in 621 was an event which could 
 not fail to change the character of his ministry whatever 
 his original attitude to that transaction may have been. 
 From that time till the tragic death of Josiah in 608 we 
 may assume that an effort was made to carry out the 
 legislative provisions of the Covenant; and Jeremiah 
 must have watched with deep concern the effect of the 
 new order of things on the religious temper of the 
 nation. Soon after the death of Josiah the threatening 
 aspect of foreign affairs made Jeremiah a prominent 
 actor on the stage of history, and he continued to work 
 in the full blaze of publicity till near the end of his life. 
 Between these dates there is an interval of about thirteen 
 years during which our knowledge of the prophet's 
 activity is certainly very imperfect. It has been a common 
 opinion among his commentators that so far as extant 
 prophecies are concerned this interval is an almost 
 complete blank in his history. The fact is sometimes 
 explained by the assumption that the conduct of public 
 affairs was very much in harmony with Jeremiah's ideals 
 and gave him no occasion to intervene; sometimes by 
 the suggestion that he had been reduced to silence by 
 the failure of his early Scythian predictions. Neither of 
 these considerations has much plausibility in itself, and 
 the fact which they are put forward to explain is at 
 least incapable of proof. When Jeremiah says (xxv. 3) 
 that he had exercised an unremitting ministry of three 
 and twenty years from the thirteenth year of Josiah to
 
 CH. vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 109 
 
 the fourth of Jehoiakim, it would be surprising if 
 more than the half of that period had left no literary 
 remains. The theory is intelligible on the assumption 
 that the prophecies are in the main chronologically 
 arranged. It would follow from that assumption that in 
 passing from ch. vi to ch. vii we step at once from pre- 
 Deuteronomic days to the beginning of Jehoiakim's 
 reign, and that all the prophecies from ch. vii onwards 
 are of still later date. But if in accordance with the 
 tendency of recent criticism we abandon entirely the 
 hypothesis of chronological order there is nothing to 
 justify the improbable view that we have so long an 
 interruption in the record of Jeremiah's activity. It may 
 be true that no discourse can certainly be dated from 
 the second half of Josiah's reign certain dates are 
 hard to find in the writings of Jeremiah but there are 
 a considerable number of utterances which on internal 
 evidence may be more naturally assigned to this period 
 than to any other. It will therefore be convenient at this 
 point to devote a chapter to the examination of some 
 miscellaneous poems, illustrating different aspects of 
 Jeremiah's experience in the obscure middle section of 
 his life, but more especially his reflexions on the result 
 of the Deuteronomic reformation. 
 
 I . 
 
 We will look first at two passages of extraordinary 
 biographical interest in which we can perhaps detect 
 the earliest repercussion of the reform movement on 
 the fortunes of Jeremiah: ch. xi. 1823 and xii. i 6. 
 That his removal from Anathoth to Jerusalem was a 
 consequence of his advocacy of the Deuteronomic 
 covenant is a view which has commended itself to many 
 writers. We may admit at once that it cannot be proved 
 to be true. It is suggested by the proximity of the 
 passages to the account of the prophet's championship of
 
 no IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 Deuteronomy in the earlier part of ch. xi; but that might 
 be purely accidental, and it is easy to imagine equally 
 probable occasions which might have called forth such 
 utterances as those before us. Still, no occasion is more 
 probable than this; and in considering a passage of un- 
 certain provenance there can be no objection to placing it 
 at what may be called the point of maximum illumination. 
 In ch. xi. 1 8, 19, then, Jeremiah tells indirectly the 
 story of a plot against his life by the men of Anathoth, 
 who had been stirred to a frenzy of hatred by his 
 prophesying in the name of Yah we (v. 21). Now 
 an attack on the life of a prophet because of his pro- 
 phesying must have been a very rare thing in Israel. 
 There must have been in Jeremiah's preaching some 
 peculiar provocation to the prejudices of his neighbours; 
 and nothing is more likely to have excited their fury 
 than an open approval of the desecration of the local 
 shrine under royal authority. For a time he was all 
 unconscious of the ill-will he had provoked. He could 
 not understand the dark looks and muttered maledic- 
 tions which he encountered as he went peaceably out 
 and in amongst his acquaintances. But at last, by a 
 sudden illumination which he ascribed to divine inspira- 
 tion, he saw into their hearts, and knew that they were 
 resolved on murder. 
 
 18 But Yahwe made me know, and I knew: 
 
 Their ill deeds I saw; 
 J 9 While I like a tame pet-lamb 
 
 That is led to the shambles 
 Knew not that for my undoing 
 
 They hatched a plot: 
 * Let us kill the tree in its sap, 
 
 Cut him off from the land of the living, 
 
 That his name be remembered no more.' 
 Full of resentment against these treacherous men, 
 the prophet rolls his cause on Yahwe with a prayer for
 
 vii] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM in 
 
 vengeance, and receives in answer a revelation of the 
 terrible fate in store for his persecutors (vv. 20-23). 
 
 If the following passage (xii. 13, 5, 6) refers to the 
 same incident, which again is not certain, though prob- 
 able, we have a still more instructive revelation of 
 Jeremiah's mind in this crisis of his history. Reflexion 
 on the experience through which he had just passed 
 seems to have raised the general question of the rectitude 
 of Yahwe's providence : that great problem of retribu- 
 tion which so exercised the minds of later Hebrew 
 thinkers was perhaps first formulated by Jeremiah. 
 
 1 Thou art in the right, O Yahwe, 
 
 Should I dispute with Thee; 
 Yet of matters of right 
 
 Would I speak with Thee. 
 Why is the way of the wicked so smooth, 
 
 And all treacherous men at ease? 
 2 Thou plantest them: they also strike root, 
 
 Beget 1 and bear fruit. 
 Near art Thou in their mouth, 
 
 But how far from their heart! 
 3 But Thou, O Yahwe, hast known me, 
 
 Hast tried how my heart is with Thee. 
 Drag them forth like sheep to the shambles, 
 For a day of slaughter devote them ! 
 
 The answer to this expostulation is given in v. 5 
 (v. 4 is plainly an insertion) : 
 
 5 With footmen thou hast run and art weary, 
 
 Then how wilt thou vie with horses? 
 In a land of peace thou art not at ease, 
 
 Then how wilt thou fare in Jordan's brake 2 ? 
 
 ' SoLXX. 
 
 2 The 'Pride of Jordan' (xliz. 19, 1. 44; Zech. xi. 3) is not thp 
 swelling of the agitated waters of the river, but the luxuriant growth of 
 cane, willows, etc., which clothes its margin, and was a haunt of lions 
 in ancient times and even as late as the Crusades.
 
 H2 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 Thus the answer which Jeremiah receives to his 
 wistful questioning of Yahwe's dealings with men is a 
 stern summons to a more heroic and strenuous conflict 
 with the forces arrayed against the truth. But is not 
 this a strange admonition to a man who has just 
 narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of treacher- 
 ous townsmen? Therein lies a real difficulty in con- 
 necting this passage with xi. 18-23, or w i tn a flight 
 from Anathoth. For xii. 6 is usually taken to imply that 
 the greater trial ahead of him is the enmity of his own 
 family, and that would certainly be something of an 
 anti-climax to an attempt on his life. But that is perhaps 
 not a necessary implication (see below). No interpre- 
 tation of xii. 5 seems to me half so probable as the old 
 view which reads in it a contrast between the trials of 
 the prophet's youthful ministry in Anathoth and the 
 more formidable opposition which he must encounter 
 in Jerusalem 1 . The warning must therefore have come 
 to him at that point of his life when he was driven from 
 his native village to find a refuge in the crowded streets 
 of the capital. And if we may suppose that xii. I 6 is 
 a retrospective meditation written in the safety of his 
 retreat in Jerusalem, it is not inconceivable that in spite 
 of the frightful danger which he had escaped he should 
 thus contrast the comparatively tranquil life he had left 
 behind for ever with the stormy career which awaited 
 him in the great city 2 . 
 
 1 See Cheyne, Jeremiah: his life and times, pp. 122 f. 
 
 a Cornill (who assigns the incident to a late period of Jeremiah's life) 
 seeks to harmonise the two sections by reversing their order, taking 
 xii. I, 2, 5, 6, as the prelude to xi. 18 ff. He conceives Jeremiah as 
 brooding over the abstract problem of God's dealings with individuals 
 (xii. I, 2), when he is suddenly shaken out of his reverie by the challenge 
 of v. 5, which tells him in effect that these theoretical perplexities are 
 but as child's play compared with the life and death struggle in which 
 he will speedily be involved. The nature of that conflict is indicated by 
 r. 6 : it is the enmity and treachery of his father's house that will try his
 
 vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 113 
 
 faith and courage to the uttermost. And this is the divine warning 
 referred to in xi. 18 which discloses to him the danger to which he is 
 exposed. From the clouds of abstract speculation he is thus brought 
 sharply down to the realities of practical life; and he realises that beside 
 the trials that lie before him his wrestling with the inequalities of provi- 
 dence was as a race with footmen compared to a contest with horses. 
 This ingenious theory is at first sight very attractive, but on examination 
 it proves to be vulnerable at several points. It necessitates the rejection 
 off. 3 ; for if that verse be retained it was clearly no speculative theological 
 problem that troubled the prophet, but the prosperous lot of particular 
 men whose treachery (v. i) was well known to him. A more serious 
 objection lies in the sense given to v. 5. It does not seem a natural 
 application of the figures there used to take them as denoting the contrast 
 between theoretical perplexities and a desperate fight with human foes : 
 the difference suggested is one not of kind but of degree. But the weakest 
 point of the theory is what Cornill regards as its chief recommendation, 
 viz. the identification of the revelation contained in xii. 6 with that of 
 xi. 1 8. That is inadmissible for two reasons. In the first place they refer 
 to two quite separate things; for we have no right to assume that the 
 plot to murder Jeremiah was instigated by members of his own family. 
 And in the second place we cannot identify the two without robbing 
 xi. 1 8 of its proper and obvious meaning. It plainly means that by a 
 sudden flash of God-given insight the prophet discovered the peril of 
 his situation; and the idea that he was falling back on a previous divine 
 communication is suggested by nothing in the narrative. Ch. xi. 1 8 ff. 
 is in short perfectly intelligible by itself, and the only question is whether 
 xii. i ff. can be understood as a sequel, or must be referred to some 
 totally unrelated incident. Since it is hardly likely that an event of this 
 kind occurred twice in Jeremiah's life, I have ventured in the text above 
 to hazard an explanation which might enable us to combine them 
 without sacrificing what appears the most satisfying interpretation of 
 xii. 5. Two objections, however, must be frankly faced, (i) xii. 6 can 
 no longer be taken as explanatory of v. 5 ; and the thrice repeated QJ 
 must be understood as emphasising a circumstance of Jeremiah's recent 
 experience which made a return to the old conditions impossible. 
 (2) The last clause of v. 6 appears to imply that Jeremiah was still in 
 touch with his family, and liable to be deceived by their fair words. But 
 Cornill has pointed out the contradiction between this clause and the 
 preceding ('even they are after thee in full cry'), and rejects the latter 
 as spurious. It would be just as easy to reject the other; if, indeed, it 
 would not be better to omit the whole verse as a mistaken commentary 
 on v. 5. 
 
 S.P.R.
 
 ii4 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 These two passages are interesting in another respect. 
 They are the first of a unique series of devotional poems 
 commonly known as the 'Confessions of Jeremiah,' 
 which unfold the secret of his best life, the converse of 
 his soul with God through which the true nature of 
 religion was disclosed to him. In all probability the 
 sections we have just considered mark the opening of 
 that well-spring of inward devotion which sustained 
 him through life. It would throw great light on his 
 spiritual history if we could ascertain that this strain 
 of subjective piety dates from the crisis in his life when 
 he first tasted the bitterness of the man whose foes are 
 they of his own household J . 
 
 II 
 
 If the account of Jeremiah's original attitude to 
 Deuteronomy given in the last chapter be in the main 
 correct, we might expect to find among his prophecies 
 some indication of his growing alienation from the 
 spirit and aims of the party of reform. We need not be 
 surprised if the evidence on this subject is scanty and 
 ambiguous. For it is not probable that Jeremiah re- 
 mained long a supporter of the accomplished reforma- 
 tion. The new law must have passed immediately into 
 the control of the priesthood, in whose hands it devel- 
 oped tendencies which more than neutralised any good 
 that the movement ever contained. Jeremiah must have 
 been quick to detect this soul of evil in things good; 
 and there is abundant proof that he protested against 
 the formalism, the wrong emphasis on cultus, and the 
 false religious confidence engendered by the Law, with 
 all his might. The difficulty is to determine how far 
 such utterances express disillusionment or change of 
 attitude on his part, or whether they are consistent with 
 1 See Chap, xi below.
 
 vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 115 
 
 an earlier advocacy of the Deuteronomic covenant. 
 Cornill maintains that the entire absence of favourable 
 references to Deuteronomy (apart from xi. I 8) shows 
 that at no time could the prophet have been in sympathy 
 with the reformation, or hopeful that any good could 
 result from it. It might be argued with equal force that 
 if he had been from the first opposed to it, he must 
 have denounced it in far more unsparing terms than we 
 find anywhere in the book. The truth is that explicit 
 and unmistakable allusions to Deuteronomy are fewer 
 than we should have anticipated on any view of Jere- 
 miah's judgment on its merits. The really significant 
 fact is that while he relentlessly exposes the evil effects 
 of the formal acceptance of Deuteronomy, he never 
 (with the disputed exception of viii. 8) directly assails 
 the Law itself, or the men who were responsible for 
 first putting it in force. 
 
 With this question in mind, the first passage which 
 arrests our attention is the striking oracle of ch. vi. 
 1620, in which one writer 1 thinks we can discover the 
 earliest evidence of Jeremiah's opposition to the spirit 
 of Deuteronomy: 
 
 16 Thus said Yahwe: 
 
 'Stand by the ways and see, 
 
 And inquire for the ancient paths, 
 Which is the way of good, and walk in it, 
 
 And find rest to your soul.' 
 
 And they said, 'We will not walk.' 
 
 *7And I set watchmen over them, 
 
 2* ***** 
 
 ******* 
 
 * Give heed to the trumpet's sound.' 
 
 And they said, 'We will not heed.' 
 
 1 Schmidt, op. cit. p. 252. 2 Two lines perhaps omitted. 
 
 8 z
 
 u6 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 18 Therefore hear, ye peoples, ye shepherds of flocks 1 ! 
 *9Hear, thou earth! 
 
 Behold, I bring evil on this people, 
 
 The fruit of their falling away 2 ; 
 For to My word they gave no heed, 
 
 And My law they contemned. 
 
 20 What is incense from Sheba to Me, 
 
 Or calamus fine from a distant land? 
 Your holocausts find no favour; 
 Your sacrifices delight not Me. 
 
 Few of Jeremiah's utterances present a more interest- 
 ing exegetical problem than these verses. They describe 
 the failure of the discipline by which Yah we had sought 
 to bring Israel to a right mind. Two methods He had 
 tried in vain. He had appealed to the conservative 
 principle which is essential to a sound religious develop- 
 ment. He had called the people to pause and consider 
 the diverse religious tendencies of their age, and to 
 follow that which was in harmony with the historic 
 faith of Israel. The 'old paths' are the genuine ethical 
 principles of the Mosaic revelation embodied in the 
 traditional Tord or teaching of Yahwe (v. 1 9). These 
 are contrasted with new-fangled costly refinements in 
 cultus 'frankincense that comes from Sheba' and 'fine 
 calamus from a far off land* (v. 20) through which 
 their new spiritual guides held out the delusive promise 
 of peace of mind. Only by renouncing these expedients, 
 and returning to the 'way of good' marked out by all 
 the best teaching of the past, could they find the rest 
 for which their soul pined and which they had not got. 
 The second method was 'the sound of the trumpet,' 
 the warnings of providence interpreted by prophecy. 
 To both appeals the people had turned a deaf ear, and 
 
 1 Following the text of the LXX. 
 * LXX.
 
 vnj IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 117 
 
 their refusal is accepted as final: judgment can no 
 longer be averted (vv. 1 8 f.). 
 
 Such is the general sense of the passage. That it 
 belongs to the post-Deuteronomic period of Jeremiah's 
 ministry is almost certain. It deals with the spirit of 
 shallow and half-hearted optimism which the self- 
 constituted guardians of the covenant endeavoured to 
 instil into the mind of the people. 'They (the priests 
 and prophets) heal the hurt of my people lightly, saying, 
 "Peace! Peace!" when there is no peace' (vi. 14)*. 
 Jeremiah knew that this official propaganda of optimism 
 had failed to allay the feeling of unrest which troubled 
 the public mind, and could only be removed by a 
 return to the old paths of morality and true religion. 
 The rest of soul here spoken of is not to be identified 
 with the inward spiritual satisfaction which Jesus 
 promises to the weary and heavy laden*; and yet there 
 is more than verbal agreement between these two great 
 sayings. From the lips of the prophet it means the deep 
 peace of mind in face of threatening national dangers 
 which comes through a life ordered in accordance with 
 the eternal laws of the divine government of the 
 universe; in the mouth of Jesus it is the higher blessed- 
 ness of the individual who in meekness and humility 
 accepts the yoke of Christ and knows that nothing can 
 separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus his 
 Lord. 
 
 1 Kraetschmar (Dif Bundesvorstelluttg im A.T., p. 48) has pointed 
 
 out that 'peace' (D*l7KO is the word technically used for the relation 
 between two parties which results from the ratification of a covenant. 
 In any case there can be little doubt that the ground of confidence on 
 which these soothing assurances were based was the renewal of the 
 covenant between Yahwe and the nation. To Kraetschmar also I owe 
 
 the observation that QV?^, in the sense of peace with God, is first 
 found in Jeremiah (p. 149). 
 
 2 Matt. xi. 29: Kai eupT/crere dvairavtriv rats \j/v\al^ v/ju3v.
 
 n8 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 The question now is, What is meant by the summons 
 to seek for the old paths ? Does it refer to a single event, 
 or is it a general exhortation such as a prophet might 
 have addressed to his contemporaries at any period of 
 the later history ? Has it, in short, anything to do with 
 Deuteronomy? Now if the prophet is here dealing with 
 the religious temper induced by the covenant, he must 
 have had Deuteronomy in his mind; and his criticism 
 of the results of the reformation must involve a certain 
 estimate of the instrument of that reformation the 
 Deuteronomic code. And this might take three direc- 
 tions, (i) The promulgation of the Law might itself 
 be the divine call to walk in the old way revealed amid 
 the thunders of Sinai. On that interpretation Jeremiah 
 still believed in Deuteronomy as an expression of the 
 true religion of Israel, and the sin with which he charges 
 the people is their refusal to observe the covenant in its 
 essential ethical requirements (cf. xi. 10). (2) The idea 
 may be that Deuteronomy stands opposed to the funda- 
 mental principles of the religion of Yahwe, and the 
 prophet calls on the people to renounce their trust in a 
 written code, and live in the spirit of the faith once 
 committed to their fathers. (3) He may mean that they 
 are to test Deuteronomy itself by the fundamental principles 
 of the national religion, and discover how far the 
 tendencies which it fostered were in accordance with 
 the revelation of Yahwe's will. It seems to me that the 
 last view enables us to harmonise the conflicting indica- 
 tions of the prophet's estimate of Deuteronomy. No 
 doubt it implies a critical attitude towards a movement 
 of which he had once been an ardent supporter; but 
 such a change is intelligible, and was in the circum- 
 stances inevitable. We know that the emphasis on the 
 ceremonial side of religion was to Jeremiah the dead 
 fly in the ointment of the apothecary. Now in Deutero- 
 nomy the ritual element, though present, is subordi-
 
 VH] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 119 
 
 nated to the higher purpose of purifying the national 
 worship; and it is clearly a much more advanced phase 
 of ceremonialism that is contemplated here. Deutero- 
 nomy says nothing about frankincense and calamus 
 these belong to the more sumptuous ritual of the 
 Priestly Code but since they were evidently in use 
 we may be sure that the 'false pen of scribes' (viii. 8) 
 was already at work investing them with legal sanction. 
 We can understand that Jeremiah might accept the 
 moderate ritualism of Deuteronomy for the sake of the 
 moral demand which the code laid on the conscience of 
 the nation. But when he sees the whole reform move- 
 ment degenerating into a superstitious trust in the 
 Temple and its worship he falls back on a principle; 
 and he asserts that principle absolutely (i>. 20 b\ 
 although logically it sweeps away as irrelevant the 
 sacrificial element in Deuteronomy itself. 
 
 We here touch on the question of the prophetic view 
 of cultus in general; but that is a subject which demands 
 fuller treatment in another place 1 . We may note, how- 
 ever, the peculiar significance of Jeremiah's teaching 
 in regard to this matter. It lies in the fact that he himself 
 stood in a sense at the parting of the ways, at a time 
 when much that was good in the life of Israel was 
 passing into legal and ritual moulds; and that standing 
 there, the last great exponent of prophetic theology, he 
 uncompromisingly affirmed its fundamental doctrine, 
 that in religion nothing counts but for a man 'to do 
 justly, and love mercy, and to walk humbly with his 
 God' (Micah vi. 8). 
 
 We turn next to the exquisite monologue of ch. 
 viii. 48, the last verse of which we have already dis- 
 cussed in its bearing on Jeremiah's opinion of the Law- 
 book of Josiah. The whole passage shows more clearly 
 than any other utterance of Jeremiah how his insight 
 1 Chap. ix.
 
 120 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 into the nature of religion was cleared and deepened by 
 meditation on the effect of Deuteronomy on the spirit 
 of the nation I . It reads as follows : 
 
 4 Do men fall and never rise up? 
 
 Or turn and not return? 
 5 Why falleth this people away 
 
 Unceasingly backward? 
 They cling to deceit, 
 
 Refusing to turn. 
 
 6 1 have hearkened and heard; 
 
 They speak not the truth. 
 Not one repents of his evil, 
 
 Saying, What have I done? 
 Each rushes along in his course 
 
 Like a horse in the battle. 
 
 7 Yea the stork in the heavens 
 
 Knoweth her season, 
 And the turtle and swallow 
 
 The time of their coming; 
 But My people they know not 
 
 The manner 2 of Yahwe. 
 
 8 How can ye say, 'We are wise, 
 
 And the Tora of Yahwe is with us'? 
 Lo! surely, 'tis written in falsehood 
 By a false pen of scribes ! 
 
 The contrast between the religion of the letter and 
 the religion of the spirit could not be more finely 
 described than in these lines. The prophet is lost in 
 amazement at the persistent impenitence of his people. 
 When a man falls the next thing is he rises again; if he 
 turn aside in his way he will turn back; but Israel seems 
 to have learned the secret of perpetual relapse. The 
 prophet has listened in vain for any sign of misgiving 
 
 1 pp. 105 ff. 
 
 2 On the sense of tDSfc^tt here, see p. 139 n. below.
 
 m] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 121 
 
 or better thoughts : No man repents of his wickedness, 
 saying, What have I done? Their headlong career of 
 wickedness is like the impetuous rush of a horse in 
 battle, reckless of obstacles and consequences. Then 
 follows the contrast of the migratory birds, those deni- 
 zens of a purer air, which far as they wander are com- 
 pelled by a mysterious law of their nature to return at the 
 appointed season. Such is religion as Jeremiah conceived 
 and experienced it. It is the instinct of the human soul 
 for the divine, an instinct which responds to the laws 
 of the spiritual universe, and, unless perverted by evil 
 habit (xiii. 23), guides it unerringly to its true home in 
 God. In this fine image Jeremiah anticipates the great 
 word of Augustine: Quia fecisti nos ad te, et tnquietum 
 est cor nostrum donee requiescat in te l . The people pride 
 themselves on their possession of a written law; and 
 when the prophet charges them with having no religion 
 in their hearts, they retort that they have what is better, 
 they have it in a book! It is this illusion of infallibility 
 and finality attaching to the written word, as if it were 
 superior to the living voice of prophecy or the dictates 
 of the religious sense, that Jeremiah seeks to dispel by 
 the sweeping declaration that the true Toraof Yahwe has 
 been falsified by the mischievous activity of the scribes. 
 Religion is an instinct: in the sense that it is im- 
 planted in human nature not, of course, in the sense that 
 it is unintelligent. In a repeated phrase of Jeremiah it is 
 'knowledge of Yahwe' (ix. 2, 5 [3, 6], xxii. 16). To know 
 God is to be likeminded with God, to have a sympathetic 
 understanding of His will and character. And the mind 
 of God is declared in a couple of verses which, whether 
 written by Jeremiah or not, sum up his conception of 
 what religion is: 'Let not the wise man glory in his 
 wisdom, nor the strong man in his might, nor the rich 
 man in his wealth. But let him that will glory glory in 
 1 Conf. i, i.
 
 122 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 this: in having discernment to know Me, that I am 
 Yahwe who work kindness, justice, and righteousness 
 in the earth; for in these things I delight, saith Yahwe' 
 (ix. 22 f. [23 f.J; cf. xxii. 16). Hence if we ask in what 
 religion consists the answer is, negatively, not in any- 
 thing external : not in the possession of a written book, or 
 the observance of traditional rules, or the performance 
 of actions outwardly right such as the reformation of 
 king Josiah. Religion has its seat in the heart, which in 
 Hebrew includes the reason and the moral sense (iv. 
 3, 4). Here we must guard against misconception. 
 Jeremiah does not teach that the heart can of itself 
 generate the true knowledge of Yahwe. The fact of 
 revelation is to him axiomatic: Yahwe takes the 
 initiative in making Himself known. The revelation 
 takes the form of Tora (direction), or mishpat (right 
 custom) embodied in the religious institutions of the 
 nation; and the personal inspiration of the prophets. 
 But these fail of their effect except in so far as they find 
 a response in the heart and conscience of the individual. 
 Jeremiah came to realise that there was an inherent 
 inadequacy in the method of revelation hitherto im- 
 parted to the chosen people (xxxi. 31 ff.). We cannot 
 tell at what time that truth dawned upon him; but we 
 see a preparation for it in the profound thought which 
 is expressed in the verses we have considered. 
 
 But I have always had one lode star, now, 
 As I look back, I see that I have halted 
 Or hastened as I looked towards that star, 
 A need, a trust, a yearning after God. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Another series of oracles, which it is impossible to 
 date precisely, shows that the foreboding of doom was 
 never far from Jeremiah's thoughts during the ob- 
 scure middle period of his ministry. To this period we
 
 vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 123 
 
 may assign the gloomy utterance of ch. xvi. 19, in 
 which he discloses the reason of his remaining un- 
 married and childless, and holding aloof from all 
 occasions of neighbourly intercourse whether of a 
 festive or a funereal character. Erbt 1 remarks rightly 
 enough on the extraordinary strength of individuality 
 which such defiance of custom implied in the ancient 
 world; but it is still more remarkable as a proof of the 
 deep hold which the foreboding of his people's fate had 
 taken of the prophet's mind. He sees the children born 
 in that time destined to agonising deaths (whether by 
 sword, famine or pestilence does not appear) 2 , and the 
 ground littered with their unburied corpses; all mourn- 
 ing rites suspended because of the magnitude of the 
 calamity, and all the joy of human life 'the sound of 
 mirth and the sound of gladness, the voice of the bride- 
 groom and the voice of the bride' quenched in 
 universal gloom. He seems at one time to have been 
 haunted by the spectacle of fields covered by the bodies 
 of the slain, and cities crowded with the emaciated 
 victims of famine: 'When I go out to the fields, lo, 
 there the slain with the sword; and if I enter the city, 
 lo, there the horrors of famine' (xiv. 18; cf. ix. 21 [22] 
 below). The difficulty of understanding such passages is 
 to know whether they are descriptions of actual experiences 
 or imaginative or visionary pictures of calamities still 
 future. That Judah suffered severely from famine in 
 the reign of Josiah is almost certain (see on ch. xiv 
 below); but on the whole the visionary explanation is 
 perhaps to be preferred; and on this assumption we can 
 have little hesitation in dating the oracles from the 
 later years of Josiah. 
 
 1 Op. cit. pp. 1 54 f. 
 
 3 Vague references to sword and famine (and pestilence) as instru- 
 ments of the judgment are frequent, although all the passages may not 
 be genuine; cf. v. 12 f., xi. 22, xiv. 12 ff., xv. 2, 3, etc.
 
 124 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 With regard to another poem it is more doubtful 
 whether it depicts a definite historical situation, or a 
 prophetic vision of impending woe; but it may be 
 quoted here as the culminating expression of the mood 
 we have just characterised. It is perhaps the most 
 brilliant example of the prophetic elegy which the Old 
 Testament contains, and it would be hard to find any- 
 where a more vivid and pregnant poetic image than the 
 figure of the Reaper Death with which it closes (ch. ix. 
 16, 17, 19-21): 
 
 l6 Call for the mourning women to come; 
 
 Send for the wise ones J 7in haste; 
 Let them raise a coronach o'er us. 
 Let our eyes dissolve in weeping, 
 And our eyelids gush forth tears 1 . 
 
 *9 Yea, hear, ye women the word of Yahwe, 
 
 Lend your ear to the word of His mouth ! 
 And every one teach her daughter a plaint, 
 And her friend a dirge: 
 
 20 Death has come up through our windows 
 
 Has entered our halls, 
 Cutting off the child from the street 
 The youths from the square. 
 
 21 And the corpses of men lie prone 
 
 On the open field, 
 Like sheaves behind the reaper, 
 With none to gather. 
 
 The next passage calls for closer examination on 
 account of its doubtful unity, its complex dramatic 
 structure, and its stronger suggestion of a distinct 
 historic background: ch. viii. 1423 [ix. i]. By several 
 critics it is broken up into short disjointed sections of 
 various dates; but that seems unnecessary; or if there 
 
 1 P. 1 8, which breaks the connexion, seems to have been inserted 
 here because of similarity of subject, and the catchword VfJ in v. 17.
 
 vii] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 125 
 
 be discontinuity the separate poems may still form a 
 cycle emanating from a single situation. 
 
 J 4 Ah, wherefore sit we still? 
 
 Assemble and let us go in 
 To the fenced towns, and there meet our doom; 
 
 For Yahwe our God has doomed us, 
 And drugged us with poison draughts; 
 
 For against Him we have sinned. 
 
 J 5 We waited and waited for peace, 
 
 But good came not: 
 For a time of healing, 
 And lo, Destruction! 
 
 16 The snort of his horses was heard from Dan, 
 
 From the loud neighing of his stallions the whole land quaked ; 
 And they came and devoured the land and its fulness, 
 The city and them that dwell therein 1 . 
 
 18 Incurable is my sorrow; 
 
 My heart within me is sick. 
 
 J 9Hark! my people's cry of distress 
 
 From the land far and near: 
 * Is Yahwe not in Zion ? 
 Is no King there? 
 
 20 Past is the harvest, ended the fruit-time, 
 
 And we are not saved.' 
 
 21 For the ruin of my people I mourn, 
 
 Horror hath seized me. 
 
 22 Is there no balsam in Gilead? 
 
 No healer there? 
 Why then does no healing come 
 For my people's hurt? 
 
 1 I omit the prosaic verse 1 7, which, as a threat of future punishment, 
 and introducing direct speech of Yahwe, is entirely unsuitable in its 
 present position. V. i<)t>, also spoken by Yahwe, reads like an editorial 
 interpolation in the middle of the people's complaint.
 
 126 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 2 3 O that my head were waters, 
 
 And my eyes a fountain of tears! 
 That day and night I might weep. 
 O'er my people's slain. 
 
 Assuming that the passage is a unity, it falls naturally 
 into two parts: vv. 1416 describe the collapse of the 
 national spirit under some overwhelming disaster, and 
 vv. 1823 the effect on the prophet's mind. In both 
 sections there are striking resemblances to the Scythian 
 poems of chs. iv vi. The second line of v. 14 is 
 verbally identical with the last of iv. 5 ; v. 1 6 is a close 
 parallel to iv. 15; and the prophet's anguish in vv. 1 8 ff. 
 recalls the agitation expressed in iv. 1 9 ff. These coin- 
 cidences seem at first sight to justify the opinion of 
 Erbt and others that the poem takes us back to the 
 early years of Jeremiah's work. But Cornill well points 
 out that this view overlooks a very important difference 
 of tone between this poem and the undoubted Scythian 
 oracles. 'There nervous unrest, vehement excitement; 
 here dull resignation, utter despair.' And it is easy to 
 conceive that the ideas and images of the earlier period 
 should have been revived under the pressure of a new 
 and still more formidable calamity. Certainly the hope- 
 less dejection here depicted is a mood into which the 
 nation could hardly have been brought by the Scythians, 
 unless their devastations had been much more extensive 
 than we have any reason to suppose. A feeling of 
 stupefaction and despondency has taken possession of 
 the people, as if some deadly narcotic had been adminis- 
 tered to them, depriving them of energy and thought 
 (v. 14). The long anxious vigil of hope deferred has 
 been ended by a sudden and desolating stroke (v. 1 5), 
 and they resign themselves to a miserable death. Yet 
 it does not seem to be the final catastrophe which is 
 described. There is still the apprehension of danger 
 from the North (16); still a wistful looking to Zion;
 
 vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 127 
 
 still the cry of distress rises from all quarters of the 
 land (19). And to this corresponds, point for point, the 
 prophet's state of mind as revealed in the second half 
 of the poem. He is broken with the breach of his people, 
 which he knows to be irretrievable (i;. r 2i); his sorrow 
 like their wound is incurable (18). Deliverance would 
 now come too late, for the season which might have 
 brought forth the fruits of righteousness has been 
 suffered to pass unimproved (v. 20). But with what 
 reluctance Jeremiah abandons the hope of recovery, and 
 realises that for him nothing remains but ceaseless 
 unavailing tears, we see from the last two pathetic 
 stanzas (vv. 22, 23). 
 
 It is no doubt hazardous to fix down a passage like 
 this to a definite background. There is but one situation 
 known to us which would enable us in some measure to 
 combine its varied allusions; and that is the time of 
 consternation and dismay which must have followed 
 the disastrous battle of Megiddo. It closed the period 
 of mingled optimism and anxiety which had been 
 initiated by the Deuteronomic covenant, and lasted till 
 the death of Josiah. It shattered the illusory hopes based 
 on the formal acceptance of the Covenant, and must 
 have plunged the nation into the depth of gloom which 
 is the ground-note of these verses. The only serious 
 obstacle to this theory is the reference to a northern 
 enemy in v. 16, which (since it cannot apply to the 
 Scythians) is most naturally understood of Jeremiah's 
 later foe from the North, the Chaldeans. We are told, 
 however, that after the battle Pharaoh Necho took up 
 his headquarters at Riblah on the Orontes (2 Kings 
 xxiii. 3 3); and it is just possible that for once the northern 
 foe is the Egyptian army encamped there, obsessing 
 the mind of the people with the dread of an invasion 
 from that quarter. It is not a very convincing suggestion, 
 though it seems the only one consistent with an inter-
 
 128 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 pretation of the poem which on other grounds has 
 much to recommend it 1 . 
 
 The passage we have just considered shows Jere- 
 miah's sympathy with a people crushed in spirit by an 
 appalling catastrophe; we turn next to one which will 
 reveal his attitude in an emergency that brought him 
 into conflict with the prevalent religious tendencies of 
 the time. IV 
 
 The fourteenth chapter of Jeremiah is a mixed col- 
 lection of oracles purporting to have been uttered 
 'concerning the drought' (v. i). Although the con- 
 nexion of some parts of the chapter with such a visitation 
 is extremely problematical, it is quite certain that the 
 drought did not exist merely in the imagination of the 
 redactors; and we shall not go far astray if we date it 
 in the later years of Josiah's reign. The series opens 
 with a picturesque description of the calamity under 
 which land and city are suffering : vv. 26 : 
 2 Judah laments, and her gates do languish; 
 
 They sit mourning on the ground; 
 While a cry goes up from Jerusalem. 
 
 1 The only support I have found for this conjecture is in Steuernagel's 
 Einleitung, p. 546: 'Worte wie viii. 21 ff., ix. 16 ff. diirfen das Ungluck 
 des Jahres 607 zur Voraussetzung haben.' Apart from the difficulty in 
 v. 1 6 the theory would in my opinion be greatly strengthened by 
 extending it to the whole of this passage. As for the inclusion of ix. 16 ff., 
 I am now more sceptical, though there is something to be said for 
 assigning it to the same situation. There are two other poems which 
 might be considered in this connexion. Ch. xiv. 17, 1 8, has some 
 affinities with viii. 18-23 m ^ e mention of a 'great breach' and an 
 'incurable wound' ("life?, rO)>and the prophet's continuous weeping 
 over the slain. But this seems rather a presentiment of future calamity 
 than a record of real experience (see on v. 18, p. 123). Again, in xiv. 
 1922 the last couplet of v. 19 is almost word for word identical with 
 viii. 15; and in spite of its place in ch. xiv might, if we detach v. 22 
 as a later interpolation, refer to a great disaster in the field rather than to 
 the slow misery of a drought. To deny the genuineness of the whole 
 passage (Cornill, etc.) seems uncalled for.
 
 vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 129 
 
 3 The nobles have sent their menials for water, 
 
 They came to the cisterns but water they found not; 
 They returned with empty pitchers. 
 
 4 The tillers of the soil are dismayed, 
 
 For no rain has fallen : 
 The husbandmen are ashamed, and cover their heads. 
 
 5 Yea the hind in the field forsakes her young, 
 
 For there is no grass; 
 ^ And wild asses stand on the knolls, 
 
 Gasping for breath, with glazing eyes; 
 For there is no herbage. 
 
 In the following verses we have two prayers of the 
 people called forth by this judgment (vv. 79, 1922), 
 with the divine answer in each case (xiv. 10, xv. 14). 
 In substance the two prayers are nearly identical; and 
 we will here confine our attention to the first (vv. 79) 
 with the answer in v. 10. 
 
 7 If our offences witness against us, Yahwe, 
 
 Act for Thine own name's sake ! 
 For many are our backslidings before Thee; 
 Against Thee have we sinned. 
 
 8 Thou Hope of Israel, Yahwe ! 
 
 Its Saviour in time of need ! 
 Why be like a guest in the land 
 As a traveller spending a night? 
 
 9 Why be like a man asleep, 
 
 As one unable to save? 
 For Thou'rt in our midst, O Yahwe ! 
 By Thy name are we called. 
 Forsake us not quite ! 
 
 10 Thus saith Yahwe to this people: 
 'Even thus do they love to waver; 
 
 They restrain not their feet.' 
 Yahwe has no pleasure in them; 
 
 Now He'll remember their guilt. 
 S.P.R.
 
 130 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 This prayer is uttered in the name of the people; and 
 the remarkable thing about it is that it contains nothing 
 which rises above the popular religion of the time. We 
 find in it a general confession of sin without specification 
 of offences or promise of amendment, a profession of 
 trust in Yahwe as the Saviour of Israel, a strongly 
 anthropomorphic appeal to Him to show Himself 
 neither too unconcerned nor too weak to deliver; and 
 finally an expression of the nation's claim on Him as 
 its patron Deity, involving as it does the honour of His 
 name. Now Jeremiah was aware that a sense of ultimate 
 dependence on Yahwe was latent in the religious con- 
 sciousness of the nation, and apt to come to the surface 
 when all other help failed (ii. 27). If that vague con- 
 viction of a claim on Yahwe's succour existed under the 
 unreformed religion of the prophet's early ministry, it 
 must have been greatly strengthened by the renewal of 
 the national covenant under Josiah 1 ; and the question 
 arises how far such a prayer expresses Jeremiah's own 
 feeling. It is difficult to believe that it is an intercession 
 in which he identifies himself with the people in their 
 acute distress; for it represents neither his conception 
 of the divine character, nor his view of the relation 
 between Israel and Yahwe. Is it then, as Duhm thinks, 
 an ironical exposure of their crude idea of Yahwe as a 
 placable, good-natured, but capricious deity; or even a 
 mocking parody of public prayers actually offered in 
 the Temple*? That is almost inconceivable. Jeremiah 
 would not have thrown so much warmth and poetic 
 imagination into the composition if he had meant it as 
 a caricature of a type of devotion which he merely 
 despised (Cornill). It is far easier to suppose that he 
 simply wrote down the words as he had heard them 
 
 1 The second prayer (P. 21) contains an express appeal to the 
 covenant. 
 
 J So Erbt, p. 264.
 
 vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 131 
 
 sung by the Temple choir; and that the psalmists of the 
 pre-exilic Temple were capable of writing a hymn as 
 full of poetic feeling and imagination as this, we have 
 no right to deny. But whether we take that view or hold 
 that Jeremiah himself is the author, there is no doubt 
 that his final and deepest conviction is expressed in the 
 stern sentence of rejection in v. 10 a. This return to 
 Yahwe is but a phase of the chronic vacillation and 
 halting between two opinions which marked the religious 
 history of Israel : they love swaying hither and thither : 
 now they run after the Baals; then, in trouble, after 
 Yahwe; and their present mood of contrition is 'as the 
 morning cloud, and the dew that early passes away' 
 (cf. Hos. v. I5~vi. 4) 1 . 
 
 V 
 
 We have seen (pp. 122 f.) that Jeremiah was isolated 
 from the social life around him because the shadow of 
 impending calamity lay heavy on his heart and made 
 him a misunderstood and lonely man. But another 
 thing that drove him into solitude was his sensitive 
 recoil from the wickedness especially the deceit and 
 treachery which seemed to pollute the air he breathed 
 
 1 The rest of ch. xiv has no bearing on our present subject. Vv. 
 II, 12 are evidently inserted here under the impression that vv, 79 
 are Jeremiah's own intercession for the people; and if that impression 
 be mistaken they are misleading in their present position. Their sub- 
 stantial genuineness, however, is not to be questioned. The idea recurs 
 too frequently in the book (vii. 16, xi. 14) not to have some basis in 
 Jeremiah's experience; and that he actually interceded for the people is 
 asserted in passages of undoubted originality (xv. 11, xviii. 20, etc.). 
 Similarly we must recognise a genuine element in vv, 1316, which 
 have nothing to do with the drought, but have found a place here 
 because they begin with a palliation of the guilt of the common people 
 which seems to have struck the editors as another form of intercession 
 on their behalf. The passage belongs to a series of oracles against false 
 prophecy which will be considered in a later chapter. The two remaining 
 sections (17, 18 and 19-22) have been dealt with in other connexions 
 (pp. 123, 128*.). 
 
 92
 
 132 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 in the company of his fellow men. Under this sense of 
 social estrangement he wrote a poem whose haunting 
 melancholy was to find an echo in the kindred spirit of 
 William Cowper 1 . Although it might have been com- 
 posed at any time of Jeremiah's later life, a certain 
 resemblance to the opening of ch. v tempts one to 
 assign it to the early days of his residence in Jerusalem 
 (see pp. 138 ff. below). It is found in ch. ix. I 8 [2-9]: 
 1 that I had in the desert 
 
 A wayfarer's lodge! 
 For fain would I leave my people, 
 
 And go clean away. 
 For adulterers are they all, 
 A concourse of traitors ! 
 
 2 Falsehood and not good faith 
 
 Succeeds in the land; 
 They hasten from evil to evil; 
 And * Me they know not,' 
 Saith Yahwe. 
 
 3 Beware each man of his friend, 
 
 Let none trust a brother ! 
 For a brother will cheat like Jacob, 
 
 And every friend will slander. 
 4 Each one deceives his neighbour; 
 
 They speak not the truth; 
 They have trained their tongue to lies; 
 They are weary in wrong-doing (?) 
 5 Crime follows on crime, deceit on deceit: 
 'They will not know Me,' 
 Saith Yahwe. 
 
 1 Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
 Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
 Where rumour of oppression and deceit, 
 Of unsuccessful or successful war, 
 Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, 
 My soul is sick, with every day's report 
 Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
 
 vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 133 
 
 6 Behold I will smelt them and try them; 
 
 For how can I look on my people 1 ? 
 
 7 Their tongue is a deadly arrow, 
 
 The words of their mouth deceit. 
 A man will speak peace to his neighbour, 
 While at heart he lies in wait. 
 
 8 'Shall I not visit for these things?' 
 
 Is Yahwe's word, 
 'Or on such a people as this 
 My soul not take vengeance?' 
 
 VI 
 
 One more poem, of unknown date but quite possibly 
 from the reign of Josiah, may be quoted here as an 
 illustration of Jeremiah's perception of the analogy 
 between the natural and spiritual worlds (ch. xviii. 
 
 13-17): 
 
 J 3 Inquire among the nations: 
 
 Who hath heard such a thing? 
 A thing appalling hath she done 
 The Virgin of Israel. 
 
 M Dissolves from Sirion's crest 
 
 The spotless snow? 
 Or cease the mountain streams 
 Their ice-cold flow? 
 
 J 5But Me have My people forgotten; 
 
 They serve the Unreal ! 
 They have come to grief in their ways 
 
 The tracks of yore, 
 Walking in paths 'uneven' 
 
 A road unpaved; 
 
 1 Duhm reads for Plfctytf , PiyfcW strictly = 'look awav from'; and 
 ... .... ... v ; / 
 
 inserts 'evil' with the LXX.
 
 134 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 16 To make their land desolation 
 
 A scoff for all time. 
 All who pass by are shocked, 
 They shake their heads. 
 
 J 7 Like an east wind I will disperse them 
 
 Before their foes; 
 
 My back, not My face, I will show them 
 In their day of distress. 
 
 The gem of these somewhat unequal lines is the 
 image of v. 14, and it is peculiarly unfortunate that the 
 point of the comparison is entirely obscured by the 
 uncertainty of the text and interpretation 1 . Whether 
 we have two distinct and independent images, or one 
 image in two parts; whether they are merely a pic- 
 turesque illustration of the unchanging in nature as 
 a contrast to Israel's fickleness in religion, or have a 
 deeper content and significance, it is impossible to say. 
 One may venture on the suggestion that to Jeremiah 
 the eternal snow of Lebanon (or Hermon), with the 
 cold perennial streams which it sends down to the 
 plains, combine to form an emblem of the unfailing 
 
 1 In the first half of v. 14 I have adopted, for the sake of a smooth 
 English rendering, an emendation of Cornill which has commended 
 itself to many subsequent writers. He reads for ^*12J> of the Hebrew 
 
 ~T 
 
 fV*!^ (the Phoenician name of Mount Hermon: Deut. iii. 9; cf. Ps. 
 xxix. 6), and changes Y]fo 7 at the end to pi 7 'white.' The two changes 
 support each other, and it all looks plausible enough. But it is not clear 
 that any emendation is really necessary. i*l& *\\X might mean the 
 
 T 
 
 'native rock,' or even (from its Babylonian ancestry: see Burney, 
 Judges, pp. mf.) the 'mountain rock'; or if these be considered 
 improbable, *1fcjf ^V 'eternal rock' would be sufficient (so Rothstein). 
 
 The second half of the verse is untranslatable as it stands; and here I 
 have followed Rothstein, who reads D*1Pl *Jb*fi for the unintelligible 
 
 T : 
 
 DHT D*/b- The other conjectures are nothing but desperate fours de 
 force.
 
 vii] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 135 
 
 source of national vitality which the true religion would 
 have been to Israel, had it not given itself over to the 
 unreal worship that had sapped its energies, and would 
 reduce its land to an arid waste. 
 
 To Jeremiah, as we shall learn in the next chapter, 
 sin, whether national or individual, was a strange 
 unnatural thing. It comes from the perversion of an 
 original instinct for God in the human soul, producing 
 a hardening of heart 1 caused by evil habit in the 
 individual and evil custom in the community. Expres- 
 sions of pain and wonder often break from his lips at 
 the thought of the blindness and infatuation of Israel 
 in forsaking the true God to worship unreal beings 
 that cannot profit. This was one of his earliest reflexions 
 on the popular religion of Israel (ii. 413), and here it 
 meets us again towards the close. 
 
 The oracles discussed on the above pages have many 
 features in common. They were probably all composed 
 in the wake of the Deuteronomic reformation; and 
 though direct references to that event are few and 
 uncertain they reveal more or less clearly the prophet's 
 reflexions on the issues of the movement. They are 
 for the most part lyrical monologues, outpourings of 
 personal emotion like the Scythian poems of ch. iv, 
 but pervaded by a profound sadness of which these 
 youthful effusions showed little trace. There is some- 
 thing more akin to it in the other group of early 
 poems in ch. ii, dealing with the corruptions of the 
 popular religion. But nowhere in the pre-Deuteronomic 
 utterances of Jeremiah do we find an approach to the 
 sombre and melancholy mood which breathes through 
 these later poems. They are like glimpses into a 'huge, 
 motionless, interior lake of sorrow 2 ' in the breast of the 
 
 . 
 
 z The phrase is used by Carlyle in describing the last years of 
 Frederick the Great a very different person from Jeremiah, to be sure!
 
 136 IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM [CH. 
 
 prophet, reflecting nothing from its leaden surface but 
 his hopeless grief over the waywardness of his country- 
 men, and the terrible retribution in store for them. If 
 these passages had been delivered in public Jeremiah 
 might have had to complain, with better reason than 
 Ezekiel, that he was listened to 'as a troubadour with 
 a pleasant voice, and skilled in playing an instrument' 
 (Ezek. xxxiii. 32). But that is a trial to which he does 
 not appear to have been exposed. There are some 
 indications that his ministry at this time was mainly of 
 a semi-private kind 1 ; and it is probable that prior to 
 their literary publication in 604 his poetic oracles were 
 known only within the limited circle of his personal 
 friends and sympathisers. However that may be, it is 
 in these intimate impassioned utterances that we find 
 the purest expression of Jeremiah's mature genius. 
 They reveal a nature sensitive to the whole range of 
 human feeling, unrelenting towards every form of 
 falsehood in religion, but responsive to the appeal of 
 distress, and capable of utter self-identification with 
 the fate of the people he mourned. To say of Jeremiah 
 that 'dans ses quarante annees de prophetisme, il a 
 preche, il a agi, il a maudit, il a peu -pleure*' is a more 
 one-sided exaggeration than the popular view to which 
 he is par excellence the 'weeping prophet.' No doubt his 
 versatile emotional temperament reacts variously to the 
 prospect of ruin which he clearly foresaw; but we have 
 seen enough to show that there were times when his 
 overcharged sorrow could find no expression save in 
 bitter and solitary weeping. The causes of that sorrow 
 and isolation are revealed in the poems before us: 
 the painful weaning of his affections from all that 
 makes human life dear, his resolute refusal to be 
 
 1 See pp. 209 f. below. 
 
 2 Darmesteter, Les Prophetes d' Israel, p. 67 the italics of course 
 are mine.
 
 vn] IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORM 137 
 
 blinded to the realities of his position, and his uncom- 
 promising opposition to the men who were striving by 
 superficial reform to save the State from the doom 
 which he alone saw to be inevitable. In a future chapter 
 we shall learn how in this valley of Baca 1 wells of 
 spiritual refreshment were opened to him; how through 
 tribulation and inward desolation he came to know that 
 in his personal fellowship with God he possessed the 
 secret of religion and the victory that overcomes the 
 world. 
 
 * Ps. luxiv. 7 [6].
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 
 
 fifth chapter of Jeremiah opens with a poem 
 JL which introduces us to a new phase of the prophet's 
 activity, and possibly to an important event in his life 
 (ch.v. 1-5): 
 
 1 Roam through Jerusalem's streets, 
 
 And see for yourselves; 
 And seek in her market-places 
 
 If a man you can find 
 If one there be practising right, 
 
 Or mindful of truth. 
 
 2 Nay, when they say ' As Yahwe lives,' 
 
 They swear to a lie. 
 
 3 Hast Thou eyes, then, O Yahwe, for fraud, 
 
 And not for good faith? 
 Thou hast smitten them sore, but they winced not; 
 
 They took not reproof; 
 They have hardened their faces like flint, 
 
 Refusing to turn. 
 
 41 bethought me: 'These are the poor, 
 
 The ignorant folk, 
 Who know not the way of Yahwe, 
 The manner of their God. 
 
 S'l will go to the men of high station; 
 
 With them I will talk; 
 For they know the way of Yahwe, 
 
 The manner of their God.' 
 But they have quite broken the yoke, 
 
 And burst the thongs.
 
 CH. vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 139 
 
 It is an interesting conjecture of Duhm that in these 
 verses we have a transcript of Jeremiah's first impres- 
 sions of social conditions in Jerusalem just after he had 
 taken up his abode there. Duhm draws a somewhat 
 fanciful picture of the young prophet, fresh from his 
 provincial home, moving about in the lanes and bazaars 
 of the capital, keenly observant of the manners of the 
 people, but bewildered and distressed by the meanness, 
 the depravity, and the utter lack of religious principle 
 which he found everywhere. How he was overreached 
 in a bargain by an unscrupulous dealer, who had backed 
 up his voluble falsehoods with an oath by the name of 
 Yahwe: how this same dealer suffered divine chastise- 
 ment in the shape of a fractured limb, but felt not the 
 least compunction for his offence, nor recognised the 
 hand of God in his misfortune (v. 3) ! This description 
 no doubt oversteps the limits of sober exposition; but 
 the passage does at least suggest a very definite and 
 impressive personal experience. It is certainly a sig- 
 nificant feature that Jeremiah is represented as making 
 his first acquaintance with the life of a great town 
 through contact with the lower orders. It almost seems 
 as if he had struck on a stratum of society with which 
 he was previously unacquainted, and whose moral 
 degradation surprised and revolted him the unedu- 
 cated populace, whose souls no man regarded. 'These 
 are but common people stupid; they know not the 
 way of Yahwe, the ethic 1 - of their God.' So he resolves 
 
 1 The word DSfc^/b ('judgment,' 'custom,' etc.) in w. \ and 5 
 
 (cf. viii. 7) is probably to be understood, with Duhm, of the manner of 
 life which Yahwe requires of His worshippers. As each earthly court 
 has its peculiar etiquette which must be learned and observed by those 
 who move in the highest circles, so in antiquity every religion had its 
 own code of morals, its own ceremonial, on the knowledge of which 
 intercourse with the deity depended. Thus the foreign population 
 settled in Samaria by the Assyrian kings 'knew not the manner of the
 
 140 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 to try the more enlightened upper circles, the nobles, 
 the priests, the leaders of thought and opinion, in whom 
 the fruits of true religion must surely be found. But 
 here a still more appalling discovery awaits him. If 
 these men have taken away the key of knowledge from 
 the classes beneath them, they have made no good use 
 of it for themselves. Their immoralities are so flagrant 
 that he sums them up in one sweeping sentence of 
 condemnation: 'These men,' he says, 'have all broken 
 the yoke outright, have burst the thongs,' i.e. have 
 thrown off all moral and religious restraints. It is an 
 experience of complete disillusionment, which Duhm 
 compares with the effect of Luther's memorable visit 
 to Rome in 1510. 
 
 Duhm holds that the genuine poems of Jeremiah 
 stand in the book very nearly in chronological order; 
 and accordingly he assigns this incident to a very early 
 period in the prophet's career, before the time of 
 Josiah's reformation. The question arises, however, 
 whether it be possible to combine his interpretation 
 with the view advanced in the last chapter: that Jere- 
 miah's migration to Jerusalem was caused by the enmity 
 which he had incurred through his zealous advocacy of 
 the Deuteronomic covenant. Apart from the literary 
 question of the arrangement of the prophecies (on 
 which I will say something presently), the supposition 
 presents no inherent difficulty. In 620 Jeremiah would 
 still be a young man, probably not more than 25 years 
 of age. Driven from his home for his adhesion to the 
 cause of reform, he would naturally seek refuge in 
 Jerusalem, where he could find protection from his 
 persecutors, and live in the congenial atmosphere of 
 the prophetic revival, which had so suddenly captured 
 the court, the priesthood, and the influential classes in 
 
 god of the land,' and had to be instructed in it by a priest of Yahwe 
 (2 Kings xvii. 26).
 
 vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 141 
 
 the metropolis. He is hardly settled there when his dis- 
 illusionment begins. We can fancy him a friendless 
 stranger, living in a mean street, acquiring a first-hand 
 knowledge of city manners among the people at his 
 door. The result we have already described. And when 
 he betakes himself to the upper class, the men who sat 
 in Moses' seat, and had put the new law in operation, 
 he is shocked to find that their private lives are honey- 
 combed with vice, and their zeal for public religion a 
 hypocritical pretence. For the first time, perhaps, he 
 fully realised the extent of his people's depravity, and 
 the magnitude of the task which lay before him as a 
 prophet of Yahwe. 
 
 If this be the true setting of the passage we have 
 been considering, it would undoubtedly possess an 
 importance for the understanding of Jeremiah's spiritual 
 history which it would not have at an earlier period in 
 his career. It would simplify our conception of the 
 progress of his mind to suppose that his work as a 
 moral censor dates from his settlement in Jerusalem, 
 and began in disappointment with the fruits of the 
 Deuteronomic reformation. We might believe that up 
 to this time he had been occupied with the problems of 
 national religion, as we find it treated in the second 
 and third chapters of the book: that he thought of 
 Israel as a moral unity, of its sin as national apostasy, 
 and its eventual restoration as brought about by an act 
 of repentance on the part of the people as a whole. 
 It would even be conceivable that he accepted the 
 Deuteronomic covenant as such an act of repentance, 
 and at least a partial realisation of his hopes for the 
 salvation of the 'remnant of Israel.' It was only when 
 he began to test the results of the movement on men's 
 lives and characters, and saw how unreal and superficial 
 was the amendment which it had produced, and what 
 new insidious forms of self-deception it engendered,
 
 142 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 that his thoughts were turned towards the vital question 
 of the nature of religion as a relation between the 
 individual soul and God. The experience recorded in 
 the beginning of ch. v, and the new form of prophetic 
 activity which it introduced, would mark the transition 
 from the one point of view to the other; and if it took 
 place at this critical juncture of the prophet's life, it would 
 acquire an enhanced interest from the association. 
 
 The question whether this particular poem belongs 
 to the pre-Deuteronomic or the post-Deuteronomic 
 period of Jeremiah's life can never be absolutely settled, 
 and is not in itself of supreme importance. It is not 
 certain that it presupposes a protracted residence in 
 Jerusalem, nor can we be sure that Jeremiah's removal 
 thither was subsequent to the promulgation of Deutero- 
 nomy. A casual visit to the capital at any time would 
 account for such an experience as is here recorded, if 
 indeed it be necessary to refer it to any definite incident 
 at all. We must therefore recognise the possibility that 
 the passage dates from the first stage of his career, 
 and that the prophetic function which he here dis- 
 charges ran parallel with his criticism of the popular 
 religion in ch. ii, or his announcement of evil from 
 the north in ch. iv. What is of importance, however, 
 is that the poem does represent a distinct phase of 
 Jeremiah's activity, which we have not yet considered. 
 It introduces a mixed assortment of prophecies dealing 
 mainly with moral and social evils in Jerusalem, just as 
 ch. ii has dealt with the religious abuses of the time 
 as exhibited at the rural sanctuaries. In this fact we 
 seem to have a clue to the composition of chs. v 
 and vi; and a glance at the contents of these chapters 
 shows that chronological order is completely disre- 
 garded: that pre-Deuteronomic utterances alternate 
 with others which belong to the middle part of Jere- 
 miah's work commencing with the reformation.
 
 vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 143 
 
 We find, for instance, a few sections which clearly 
 belong to the cycle of Scythian poems represented by 
 ch. iv, and were undoubtedly composed at the same 
 time (v. 15-18, vi. 1-5, 22-26; cf. v. 6, 10, vi. 6). 
 It is this fact more than anything else which gives 
 plausibility to the common opinion that chs. ii vi 
 are a summary of Jeremiah's activity prior to the re- 
 formation. In reality these sections owe their position 
 to a fixed practice of the redactors, to make the threat 
 of judgment follow on the denunciation of sin : they 
 have done so on a large scale in placing ch. iv after 
 chs. ii and iii; and they have applied the method 
 in detail to the arrangement of chs. v and vi. With 
 the exception of the ' Scythian ' poems there is perhaps 
 no passage which can be positively assigned to the 
 early years of Jeremiah; and there are a good many 
 that suggest a later date. The Scythian terror seems to 
 have passed, and men give themselves to their selfish 
 and lawless pursuits with a feeling of security: 'Thou 
 hast smitten them and they felt no pain, [hast consumed 
 them but] they refuse to accept correction' (v. 3; cf. 
 vi. 13). The people are being lulled by promises of 
 prosperity into a false confidence (vi. 14). They have 
 learned to deride the prophecies of doom which once 
 caused them to tremble: 'The prophets are for the 
 wind and the word is not in them' (v. 13). It is a time 
 for reflexion and deliberate search for the old and good 
 paths in which soul-rest is to be found (vi. 1 6 f.). We 
 note further that the prophet's language has almost 
 lost the accent of mournful expostulation which fre- 
 quently appears in chs. ii and iii, and changed to 
 one of stern indignation against flagrant social vices 
 and moral delinquencies. All this confirms the impres- 
 sion that in these two chapters we have crossed the 
 Deuteronomic watershed, and find ourselves in the 
 religious atmosphere produced by the reform move-
 
 i 4 4 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 ment. For the redactors it can be said that they have 
 shown a fine sense of fitness in opening this subdivision 
 of the book with the striking poem of ch. v. 15, and 
 closing it with the not less remarkable utterance of 
 vi. 26-30. 
 
 In the present chapter, accordingly, we are to deal 
 not with a period but (as I have said) with a phase of 
 Jeremiah's activity: a phase which is more particularly 
 illustrated in chs. v and vi, but which is character- 
 istic of the whole of his later ministry, and comes to 
 light in many other passages of the book. Our subject 
 is Jeremiah's conception of sin; and this we may look 
 at from two points of view : first as revealing his own 
 character and individuality, and secondly as influencing 
 his consciousness of his prophetic mission. 
 
 To our conventional habit of reading the Old Testa- 
 ment it may seem a matter of course that a prophet 
 should denounce sin. It was certainly a prominent part 
 of his message. Micah had laid it down as an essential 
 mark of the true prophet that his voice is raised in 
 unsparing protest against the prevailing iniquities of 
 his time. ' But I am filled with might and rectitude and 
 courage to declare to Jacob his transgression, and to 
 Israel his sin' (Micah iii. 8); and all the prophets had 
 acted on this view of their mission. But we are not to 
 suppose that any true prophet took up the task from a 
 mere sense of professional duty. No man can denounce 
 sin with power and sincerity without revealing what 
 manner of man he is; nor, further, without a reflex 
 influence of his preaching on his own character and his 
 relation to God. Of all the great prophets Jeremiah is 
 least open to the suspicion of perfunctoriness in the 
 discharge of this function. It is experience of life, actual 
 contact with the vices which stain the hearts and lives
 
 vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 145 
 
 of the men around him, that excites his indignation 
 and calls forth his complaint. He is quite convinced 
 that the divine sentence of condemnation is reproduced 
 in his own ethical perception of right and wrong. 
 Yahwe appeals to his own observation and moral judg- 
 ment on the evils around him : ' Seest thou not what they 
 do in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem?' 
 (vii. 17). And it is not simply the verdict of his con- 
 science that finds expression in his writings; it is even 
 more the torture of a sensitive human spirit in the 
 presence of moral evil. Just as in his earlier days the 
 religious degeneracy of his countrymen came home to 
 him in the tumultuous revelry and licentious orgies of 
 the rural sanctuaries, which grated on his innate sense 
 of reverence and purity, so in later years it is the 
 pollution of the whole social atmosphere, acting on a 
 mind of acute susceptibility, that reveals to him what 
 sin is, and what God must think of it. 
 
 Now, to Jeremiah, as to the prophets in general, sin 
 is primarily a national or at least a social fact. To say 
 this of course does not mean that a prophet had no 
 sense of personal demerit before God. When Isaiah 
 was overpowered by the sudden vision of the divine 
 holiness, his first exclamation was 'Woe to me! I am 
 undone; for I am a man of unclean lips'; and only in 
 the second place does he reflect on the state of his 
 nation : ' I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean 
 lips.' But it follows from the Old Testament idea of the 
 nation as the subject of religion, and from the concep- 
 tion of prophecy as the organ of Yahwe's intercourse 
 with the nation, that the evils with which the prophets 
 had to deal were those which can be described as 
 national, either in the sense that they were due to the 
 action of the State through its constituted authorities, 
 or that they were so prevalent in the community as to 
 give tone and character to the corporate life. Hence 
 
 S.P.R. to
 
 146 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 the prophets' consciousness of personal sin lay in a 
 sense outside the sphere of their official commission : 
 in Isaiah's case it preceded it. We do not find in their 
 writings confessions of individual guilt or prayers for 
 individual forgiveness, such as are frequent in the 
 Psalms; or if a partial exception has to be made in the 
 case of Jeremiah, we shall see (in another chapter 1 ) 
 that it is the exception which proves the rule. In so far 
 as feelings of this kind entered into their consciousness, 
 it was in the way of sympathy with the people whom 
 they were obliged to condemn; and that certainly is 
 very prominent in the utterances of Jeremiah. But as 
 prophets they were the mouth of Yah we to Israel; and 
 what they had to declare was His judgment, which was 
 also the judgment of their own conscience, on the moral 
 condition of the nation as a whole. 
 
 It would appear, however, that Jeremiah's criticism 
 of the moral condition of his people was from the first 
 more intimate and individual than that of his pre- 
 decessors. The outstanding social abuses which called 
 forth the denunciation of the earlier prophets oppres- 
 sion of the poor, corrupt administration of justice, 
 inhumanity, greed, and ostentatious luxury among the 
 rich, and such like were still rampant in his time, and 
 did not escape their meed of censure at his hands. Dr 
 Hugo Winckler, who sees in Jeremiah a 'theocratic 
 ideologue,' finds his views on this subject 'lame and 
 shallow' as compared with those of Isaiah. 'Nothing 
 here,' he says, 'of the conviction so powerfully expressed 
 by Isaiah that the well-being of the community is the 
 first condition of a stable political order! In Jeremiah 
 we meet for the first time that hypertrophy (Ueber- 
 ivucherung) of the theocratic perversion of the world- 
 order which later gained the ascendancy in Judaism, 
 and in many periods of the Christian Church, according 
 1 Chap, xi below.
 
 vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 147 
 
 to which humanity exists for the sake of the ecclesias- 
 tical organisation 1 .' It would be difficult to put into 
 words a more utter misrepresentation of Jeremiah's 
 position than this statement, which is based on Winckler's 
 erroneous estimate of the attitude of Jeremiah to the 
 Deuteronomic movement. There is no obvious lack of 
 vigour or conviction in the following oracle in ch. v. 
 26-29: 
 
 26 Yea, rogues are found in my people, 
 
 Who set snares to do for men. 
 
 2 7 As a cage is full of birds 
 
 So their houses of unjust gain. 
 Hence they are grown great and rich 
 
 28 They are fat and stout. 
 
 They espouse not the cause of the orphan, 
 Nor defend the right of the widow. 
 
 2 9' Shall I not visit for these things?' 
 
 Saith Yahwe's voice; 
 'Or on such a nation as this 
 My soul not take vengeance?' 
 
 If such passages are rare in the writings of Jeremiah, 
 the reason is not that given by Winckler, but precisely 
 the reverse. It is not doctrinaire abstraction from the 
 realities of public life, but a vivid interest in human 
 character and motive, that is distinctive of Jeremiah's 
 ethical teaching. His indignation at social wrong was 
 shown not in word only but in deed, and at the risk of 
 his life, on more occasions than one. His zeal for public 
 justice is finely expressed in his eulogy of the kingly 
 character of Josiah (xxii. 15, 16); his democratic sym- 
 pathies come out in a scathing philippic against Jehoia- 
 kim in the same connexion (xxii. 13 f., 17); and also in 
 his firm protest against the re-enslavement of the 
 Hebrew bondmen who had been emancipated during 
 the last siege of Jerusalem (xxxiv. 8 ff.). 
 1 Geschichte Israel's, i, pp. no f.
 
 148 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 What is characteristic of Jeremiah is that, following 
 the bent of his own nature, he carries the searchlight of 
 the prophetic conscience into the region of private 
 morals. It is true he is not the only prophet who does 
 this; but unless all the indications are misleading, no 
 one else had the same sense of sin as introduced into 
 the common life by the acts and dispositions of indi- 
 viduals, and working through the whole with dis- 
 integrating and debasing power. Two evils in particular 
 are persistently denounced as evidence of the deep-seated 
 corruption that infected society and rendered judgment 
 inevitable: untruth/illness, with its hateful brood of 
 treachery and slander; and sexual profligacy. The former 
 is a theme of frequent and poignant complaint: Jeremiah 
 marvels that Yahwe's truth-loving eyes can endure the 
 sight of it (v. 3, quoted above). There is no finer trait 
 in Jeremiah's personality than his feeling of the priceless 
 worth of truth between man and man. This is on one 
 side the reflexion of the inward sincerity which was the 
 basis of his own religious life : .being true i to the God 
 whom he could not see, he could not be false to the 
 men whom he saw. On the other side it was the expfes-" 
 sion of a sensitive and affectionate nature, craving for 
 human sympathy and friendship, and longing to dwell 
 in harmony and goodwill with his neighbours. It "was 
 his bitterest experience to be cut off from this solace by 
 the universal suspicion and disregard of good faith 
 which sapped the foundations of social life, and made 
 mutual confidence impossible 1 . 
 
 Of the other outstanding social vice we have a lurid 
 picture in a verse near the beginning of ch. v; where 
 the men are charged with frequenting houses of ill 
 fame, and compared to lustful stallions each neighing 
 after his neighbour's wife (vv. 7 f.). It seems plain that 
 this refers to the morals of the upper class in the 
 
 1 See Chap, vn, pp. 131 f. above.
 
 vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 149 
 
 capital; indeed it is probable that these verses are the 
 mutilated sequel to v. 5, continuing the indictment of 
 the aristocrats, though the connexion is broken by the 
 insertion of a fragment of a Scythian poem. It is 
 remarkable that the accusation of adultery is a prominent 
 item in Jeremiah's polemic against the professional 
 prophets of his day r . 
 
 We have already seen that it was Jerusalem that first 
 opened the prophet's eyes to the depth of the people's 
 depravity, and its ripeness for judgment. As the centre 
 cf the nation's life she had drawn to herself all that was 
 worst in the narrow Judah of Josiah's reign; and Jere- 
 miah sees nothing in her worthy to live. In a striking 
 apostrophe he likens the city to one of those underground 
 reservoirs on which the inhabitants depended for their 
 water-supply, where the water was carefully preserved 
 from evaporation, and kept fresh and ready for use 
 (vi. 6, 7): 
 
 6 Ah, thou deceitful city ! 
 
 All extortion within! 
 
 7 As a cistern keeps cool its waters, 
 
 So she her evils. 
 Rapine and outrage are heard in her; 
 
 Before Me are evermore sickness and wounds. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that this view of social immorality 
 must lead to a more profound conviction of the power 
 of evil than had previously been entertained. So long as 
 national sin was seen in such acts of state as introducing 
 a heathen cult, or forming alliance with a foreign power, 
 it was possible to seek a remedy, as Elisha and the 
 Rechabites did, in political revolution. And even when 
 the evil was seen to lie deeper, in oppression and injustice 
 and violation of personal rights, there was still room 
 for hope that legislative measures might put things 
 
 1 See below, pp. 191 f.
 
 150 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 straight. But where it is perceived that sin is not national 
 merely but social a disease that spreads through every 
 fibre of the body politic, and vitiates the relations of 
 each individual to his fellows it becomes difficult to 
 think that health can be restored by any political 
 surgery. It must be remembered that Jeremiah's con- 
 ceptions were matured in the wake of the greatest 
 effort at legal reformation that had ever been made in 
 the history of Israel. Whether he expected much or 
 nothing from the enforcement of the law of Deutero- 
 nomy, he was under no illusion as to the result. At one 
 time it might have appeared to him that a return to the 
 fountain-head of the national religion would work a 
 saving change in every part of the people's life. But the 
 experiment had been tried; and whoever was deceived 
 as to its success, Jeremiah certainly was not. Of what 
 avail was it to have suppressed by force the licensed 
 prostitution of the local sanctuaries, when the very 
 same vice was prevalent among the upper ten in Jeru- 
 salem? What law could reach it there? and what law 
 could infuse into men's minds the spirit of respect for 
 human personality, of piety and justice and truthful- 
 ness, the want of which made the society of his fellows 
 intolerable to Jeremiah? It must have been under the 
 influence of such feelings as these that he exclaimed, 
 in words which now stand inappropriately as the intro- 
 duction to the Scythian poems: 'Plough up your fallow 
 ground! Sow not among thorns: Circumcise yourselves 
 to Yahwe, and remove the foreskin of your hearts, men 
 of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem, lest My wrath go 
 forth like fire, and burn inextinguishably" (iv. 3, 4). 
 
 It would be rash to affirm either that Jeremiah was 
 the first to discover the necessity of a radical change of 
 heart in order to bring forth fruits meet for repentance, 
 or that it was the failure of Josiah's reformation which 
 taught him the lesson. It is a universal assumption of
 
 vmj THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 151 
 
 the prophets that national repentance to be of any avail 
 must be sincere; that it must proceed from a genuine 
 love of righteousness, and an inward sympathy with the 
 mind of God both in His judgment on sin and in His 
 demand for ethical holiness. At the same time there can 
 be no doubt that Jeremiah's perception of the truth 
 had reactions in his experience which gave it a new 
 significance. This is due partly to the moral sensitive- 
 ness of his nature, but partly also to the conditions of 
 the age in which he lived. Although, therefore, the 
 sentences I have quoted might have been uttered at 
 any time of his life, or indeed by any true prophet at 
 any period of the history, there was no time at which 
 they could have carried the same weight of meaning as 
 in the age which witnessed the enforcement of the 
 Deuteronomic Covenant. And there is a profound 
 significance in the metaphors by which the prophet 
 expresses his judgment on the situation. The 'fallow 
 ground' is the national character, formed by generations 
 of evil living and neglect of moral and religious ideals : 
 the 'thorns' are the spontaneous product of unregene- 
 rate human nature untruthfulness, avarice, inhuman- 
 ity, profligacy, and licentious worship; and it was vain 
 to think that righteousness and true religion could 
 flourish alongside of these. The Deuteronomists had 
 tried to cut down the thorns, or the worst of them; but 
 the movement had wrought no such stirring of the 
 nation's conscience as would have made a true response 
 to the will of Yahwe possible. Unless by some divine 
 husbandry the roots could be extirpated and a new 
 heart formed (Ezek. xviii. 31) there could be no real 
 conversion to God, and no amendment acceptable in 
 His sight. It is more difficult to ascertain the precise 
 idea which underlies the figure of uncircumcision of 
 the heart; but the general conception is the same. 
 Circumcision to the Israelite was a rite of initiation into
 
 152 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 the worship of Yahwe an act of dedication signifying 
 the removal of the impurity inherent in the state of 
 nature 1 , through which the individual becomes a member 
 of the religious community. Jeremiah's teaching is that 
 the reality thus symbolised is a change of heart: 'Put 
 away the impurity, the propensity to evil, which clings 
 to your natural disposition; only thus, and not by any 
 fleshly ceremony can you be worshippers of Yahwe in 
 spirit and in truth.' We see how he is led to trace sin to 
 its seat in the perverted individual will. All those trans- 
 gressions which in their sum constitute national guilt are 
 acts of individuals, revealing the heart of the individual. 
 And the heart of man though it was in his own heart 
 that Jeremiah made this discovery 'is more inscrutable 
 than anything, and incurably diseased' (xvii. 9). Sin, in 
 a recurrent phrase of his, is 'induration of heart 8 ' 
 the deadness to religious influences of minds enveloped 
 in an atmosphere of ungodliness which cuts them off 
 from Him who is the one source of spiritual life. 
 
 With all this, it is doubtful if Jeremiah's view of sin 
 is strictly individualistic. It marks a long advance in 
 that direction; but it is not so clear that the goal is 
 reached. In the end he may have looked forward to a 
 time when .'every one that eats the sour grapes shall 
 have his own teeth set on edge' (xxxi. 30); but that is 
 under a new dispensation of religion, when the truth 
 of man's relation to God will be more adequately 
 revealed than under the forms of the Mosaic Covenant. 
 In his judgment on the present he does not seem to 
 isolate the individual from his social environment. He 
 
 1 Cf. Lev. xix. 23, the 'uncircumcision' of a fruit tree during the 
 first three years of its growth. 
 
 2 17 JTn^fe?. Cf. iii. 17, vn. 24, ix. 13, etc. Apart from Deut. 
 xxix. 1 8 [E.V. 19], Ps. Ixxxi. 13 [E.V. 12], the word is confined to 
 the book of Jeremiah (eight times), but many of the passages are not 
 genuine.
 
 vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 153 
 
 still views Israel as an organism; but an organism every 
 member of which is contaminated by the sin which 
 pervades the national life. It was the great perplexity 
 of his work to know that sin is rooted in the individual 
 soul, and yet as a prophet to have no message except 
 to the nation. The effect appears to have been to 
 strengthen the conviction that national regeneration 
 was impossible, and that nothing could save the existing 
 political organisation from final dissolution. The most 
 characteristic expression of his later judgment is the 
 isolated sentence in which he asserts the fatal force of 
 custom over the human will : ' Can the Ethiopian change 
 his skin, or the panther his stripes ? Then may you do 
 good who have become habituated to do evil' (xiii. 23). 
 Jeremiah stops short of a doctrine of human depravity, 
 which holds that evil is man's first nature. But in that 
 slavery of habit which we call second nature, and in the 
 nexus of habits which form a realm of sin around the 
 individual life he recognised a tremendous power of 
 evil which neither the will of the sinful individual nor 
 the corporate action of the State was able to break. 
 
 II 
 
 Now here we may pass to the second point of view 
 from which we were to consider Jeremiah's view of sin : 
 viz. its reflex influence on his prophetic consciousness. 
 
 Among the symptoms of 'obduracy of heart' which 
 he observed he makes frequent mention of sceptical and 
 scornful reception of the word of God. 'They have 
 denied Yahwe, and said "Not He!" And the prophets 
 are a mere wind; and the Word is not in them ' (v. 12 f.). 
 ' To whom should I speak and testify, in hope that they 
 might hear? Lo, their ear is uncircumcised, and they 
 cannot give heed; the word of Yahwe is to them a 
 scoff; they have no respect for it' (vi, 10). 'And I set
 
 154 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 over you watchers (who said), "Hearken to the trum- 
 pet's sound"; but they said "We will not listen" 
 (vi. 17). These are but a few expressions from chs. v 
 and vi of a prevailing temper of mind which Jeremiah 
 recognised as the greatest obstacle to his teaching, and 
 the most alarming symptom of the people's spiritual 
 condition. It was an exhibition of that 'sin of insensi- 
 bility or indifference to the voice of God in times of 
 moral crisis' which Dr Denney has spoken of as one of 
 those which tend to make forgiveness doubtful and 
 even desperate. 
 
 There is abundant evidence of the effect produced 
 by this callous and unbelieving attitude of his hearers 
 on the mind of Jeremiah. At times it appears to drive 
 him back on the primitive idea of the self-fulfilling 
 power of the divine word, the belief that the prophet 
 not only foretells the future, but in a sense actually 
 creates it, by the power of his inspired announcement. 
 In his opening vision he had seemed to rise above this 
 crude notion of prophecy (see Chap, n); but undoubt- 
 edly he comes very near it in one or two of his utter- 
 ances. He derives support from the conviction that the 
 word which he speaks is charged with a destructive 
 energy which will destroy his opponents; nay, that he 
 is filled with the very wrath of Yahwe finding vent in 
 human speech. 'Thus saith Yahwe of Hosts, Because 
 they have spoken this (unbelieving) word, behold I 
 make My word in thy mouth a fire, and this people 
 wood; and it shall consume them' (v. 14; cf. xxiii. 29). 
 And again, 'But with the wrath of Yahwe I am filled; 
 I am weary with holding in; I must pour it out on the 
 child in the street, and on the gathering of the young 
 men' (vi. n; cf. xv. 17, xx. 9). It is difficult to say 
 whether there is here an intrusion of human feeling 
 into the discharge of his commission which Jeremiah 
 afterwards saw to be unworthy of his calling, and a
 
 vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 155 
 
 disturbance of his fellowship with God (xv. 19; see 
 Chap, xi below). 
 
 But in Jeremiah's reflexions on the apparent fruit- 
 lessness of his mission another idea emerges which is 
 startling in its seemingly fatalistic implications. The 
 primary aim of his preaching, as of all prophetic 
 exhortation, we must hold to have been the conversion 
 of the people he addressed. Now we have seen that 
 Jeremiah recognised more and more clearly as life went 
 on that his work in that aspect was doomed to failure; 
 and it might have appeared as if this involved the defeat 
 of God's purpose in calling him to His service. That is 
 a conclusion in which no true prophet could possibly 
 acquiesce. The sense of vocation was too deeply rooted 
 in the experience of the prophet to be shaken by out- 
 ward failure or success; it sprang from the inward 
 illumination and constraint of the word of God which 
 cannot return to Him void, but shall accomplish that 
 which He pleases. He knows himself to be the instru- 
 ment of a will which is omnipotent, and a purpose which 
 will reach its ends even through the failure and frustra- 
 tion of the direct object of his work. The prophetic 
 commission is thus like a two-sided shield; one side 
 represents the moral element which is contingent on 
 the attitude of the people, and the other the absolute 
 element which belongs to it as a declaration of the 
 immutable counsel of God. And when the motto on 
 what we may call the positive side becomes invisible 
 through human disobedience and indifference, the 
 prophet turns to the reverse side and discerns a divine 
 purpose in his very failure to move the people to 
 repentance. 
 
 Although we cannot trace the growth of this con- 
 viction in the mind of Jeremiah, it finds expression in 
 several utterances of unknown date, but of undoubted 
 genuineness. He speaks of himself as commissioned by
 
 156 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 Yahwe to demonstrate the incapacity of the nation to 
 produce works meet for repentance. In ch. vi. 9 he 
 compares his work with that of the grape-gleaner pass- 
 ing his hand for a final trial over the barren branches 
 and finding no fruit; and the following verse shows 
 that the test lies in the resultlessness of his own preach- 
 ing : ' Before whom should I speak and testify that they 
 might hear? Behold, uncircumcised is their ear, and 
 they cannot give heed; behold the word of Yahwe has 
 become a scoff to them, they have no delight in it* 
 (vi. 10). Similarly in ch. viii. 13 we read: 'Would I 
 gather their harvest, there are no grapes on the vine, 
 and no figs on the fig-tree, and the leaves are withered.' 
 But the most striking and suggestive expression of the 
 idea is under a very different figure. It occurs at the 
 close of the first great division of the book, and is 
 obviously a retrospect of some period of Jeremiah's 
 ministry (ch. vi. 2730): 
 
 2 7 An assayer I have set thee among My people 
 
 To know and test their ways; 
 
 28 They are wholly intractable stuff, 
 
 Traders in slander 
 Brass and iron all 
 Corrupt in life. 
 
 2 9The bellows snorts from the fire: 
 
 The lead is consumed ! 
 In vain does one smelt and smelt; 
 
 Their vileness will not out. 
 3 'Rejected Silver' men call them, 
 
 For Yahwe rejects them. 
 
 The text of these verses is so confused, the metre so 
 uncertain, and the presence of glosses so suspected, 
 that it is impossible to make out the exact sense of the 
 image employed. We have the general idea of the 
 assayer labouring to extract precious metal (whether
 
 vm] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 157 
 
 gold or silver does not clearly appear) from a mass of 
 refractory ore, and defeated in his aim. Whether the 
 particular point be that the whole is oxidised into dross, 
 or that the mass refuses to melt so that its worthless 
 elements might be expelled, we have perhaps too little 
 knowledge of metallurgical processes among the He- 
 brews to decide. In the application, therefore, only the 
 main thoughts can be recognised; and they are such 
 as these: that the 'remnant of Israel' (vi. 9), the Judah 
 of Jeremiah's time, is a crude compound of better and 
 worse materials, whose value was to be determined by 
 the amount of sound morals and true religion which it 
 might contain; that it was the aim of Jeremiah's 
 ministry to discover this value; that it had been an 
 arduous and protracted process; and that the final 
 result proved the nation to be utterly reprobate and 
 rightly rejected by Yahwe. 
 
 Dr W. Erbt, in his original and suggestive work on 
 Jeremiah and His Time, was perhaps the first to em- 
 phasise the biographical significance of this passage. 
 He finds in it the evidence of a change of method which 
 was adopted by the prophet and determined the form 
 of his ministry during the middle period of his history. 
 Jeremiah had started life as a 'prophet to the nations' 
 (i. 5), announcing Yahwe's imminent intervention in a 
 universal catastrophe, heralded by the Scythian irrup- 
 tion. This phase of his ministry was brought to a close 
 by the promulgation of the Deuteronomic law, of 
 which he was at first a zealous partisan. But his observa- 
 tion of the effect of that transaction on the moral 
 condition of the people gradually convinced him that 
 the reform movement was being manipulated in the 
 interest of sacerdotalism in a way that deprived it of all 
 religious value. He accordingly laid aside the role of a 
 preacher of national doom, and set himself to the 
 diplomatic task of breaking up the alliance between the
 
 158 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 two parties which had amalgamated in support of 
 Deuteronomy, the hierarchical nationalistic party, 
 which regarded the merely formal institution of the 
 Covenant as a sufficient guarantee of Yahwe's favour, 
 and the prophetic party which was concerned for the 
 fulfilment of its ethical requirements in the life of the 
 community. He thus became 'Yahwe's gold-assayer,' 
 striving to win individuals to the cause of truth and 
 righteousness for which he stood. This task was accom- 
 plished in the early part of the reign of Jehoiakim, when 
 the hierarchical section of the priesthood was installed 
 in control of the Temple worship, and the prophetically 
 minded party was driven into opposition, with Jeremiah 
 as its natural leader. Just then it became apparent once 
 more that the fate of Judah hung on a great world- 
 movement among the nations; and Jeremiah resumed 
 the form of his early ministry, appearing on the stage 
 of politics with a message of judgment more inexorable 
 by reason of the conclusions he had reached regarding 
 the hopeless impenitence and irreligion of all classes of 
 his countrymen 1 . 
 
 Now, with regard to this ingenious construction of 
 Jeremiah's history, it is enough for our immediate 
 purpose to remark that it not only goes beyond any 
 evidence that can be adduced in its support, but as an 
 explanation of the passage before us it fails at the 
 crucial point. What is here described is an abortive 
 attempt to discover any good element in the mass of 
 Judean society, whereas on the theory Jeremiah achieved 
 a considerable success. That Jeremiah gathered round 
 
 1 This statement of Erbt's theory, which I hope is correct, is con- 
 densed from observations scattered through the pages of his book, 
 Jeremia und seine Zeit\ see pp. 92, 136, 141, 145, 148, 184, 190 f. 
 The point which is not quite clear is whether he regards Jeremiah's 
 efforts after a political separation of the two parties as successful or the 
 reverse.
 
 vmj THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 159 
 
 him adherents and disciples in the course of his work 
 is likely enough; but that it was his special aim to seek 
 them out there is no proof whatsoever. And it is very 
 improbable that he ever set himself the political task 
 of creating an opposition party within the ranks of the 
 priesthood. Nor is there the least suggestion of a change 
 of method at any particular period of the prophet's life. 
 The testing principle is just the word of the Lord, 
 declared by him from beginning to end of his career, 
 that word which is 'as fire, and as a hammer that 
 shatters the rock' (xxiii. 29)*. 
 
 But while there is nothing to suggest a change of 
 method, there is clearly indicated a changed attitude of 
 the prophet to his work, and a new conception of the 
 divine purpose which is fulfilled by his mission. Con- 
 templating the effect of his preaching on his generation, 
 he could not fail to see that those who rejected it were 
 hardened in unbelief, so that their last state was worse 
 than their first. The question thrust itself upon him: 
 
 1 In this connexion it is instructive to compare the different ways in 
 which the idea of the smelting pot is used by Isaiah and Ezekiel. To 
 Isaiah it is an emblem of a purifying judgment, the result of which 
 would be the removal of injustice and the restoration of the ancient 
 civic virtues in the State: 'I will bring down My hand upon thee, 
 smelting out thy dross in the furnace, and taking away all thine alloy. 
 And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at 
 the beginning: thereafter thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, 
 the faithful citadel' (Isa. {.25 f.). By Ezekiel the image is used of the 
 actual destruction of the Hebrew State by the Chaldean armies: the 
 crucible is the city of Jerusalem, in which all the refuse of Israel's 
 national life is to undergo its final trial by fire; and the object of the 
 smelting is the demonstration of the utter worthlessness of the people for 
 the ends of God's kingdom (Ezek. xxii. 17-22). Jeremiah has the same 
 view as Ezekiel of the result of the operation ; but he differs both from 
 Isaiah and Ezekiel in treating the fire as a symbol, not of the providential 
 action of Yahwe in His crowning judicial intervention, but of the 
 prophetic word, whose rejection by the people showed them to be a 
 mass of perdition, and sealed their fate.
 
 160 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. 
 
 Why this compulsion to speak in the name of Yahwe, 
 when it not merely brought scorn and persecution on 
 himself, but failed to exercise any saving influence on 
 those who heard ? And the answer that comes to him is 
 the conviction that he is Yahwe's instrument to test the 
 spiritual condition of his nation, to expose the shallow- 
 ness and unreality of its pretensions to religion, and to 
 unfold the moral principles which make its destruction 
 inevitable. 
 
 It would clear up some problems if we knew at what 
 stage of his life this revelation came to Jeremiah. On 
 the assumption that the prophecies are in the main 
 chronologically arranged the passage has naturally been 
 taken as a summary of his pre-Deuteronomic ministry, 
 the period of the Scythian oracles and the polemic 
 against the popular religion. The thought, however, 
 seems to imply a longer experience of conflict with 
 unbelief; and to date it so early certainly excludes the 
 possibility that Jeremiah ever cherished good hope of 
 Josiah's reformation. Erbt is probably right in assigning 
 the oracle to a later time, and in regarding it as a 
 retrospective reflexion on his whole activity during the 
 reign of Josiah. Its significance is hardly overestimated 
 if we think of it as marking the point when his absolute 
 prediction of the doom of Judah was finally ratified by 
 the verdict of his own conscience on the sin of his 
 people, and his mind was brought to acquiesce in the 
 divine sentence of rejection. 
 
 I have dwelt on this point at what may seem undue 
 length, because it bears on an idea which is deeply 
 grounded in the prophetic theology, if not in the nature 
 of religion itself. Jeremiah was not the first prophet 
 who saw that the revelation of spiritual truth is a 
 double-edged weapon, that its indirect effect may be, 
 and in certain conditions will be, the opposite of its 
 primary intention: that instead of producing insight
 
 vin] THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 161 
 
 and conviction it may, or must, result in a deadening of 
 the moral and religious sensibilities. It is a conviction 
 which flashed on the lofty mind of Isaiah at the moment 
 of his call. ' Go and say to this people, "Hear continually 
 without perceiving; and see continually without under- 
 standing." Make the heart of this people fat and its 
 ears dull, and smear its eyes; lest it should see with its 
 eyes and hear with its ears and understand with its 
 heart, and repent and be healed' (Isa. vi. 9 f.). In the 
 case of Jeremiah it is more natural to suppose that the 
 truth was slowly apprehended as the lesson of experi- 
 ence; but to him also it became clear that the word of 
 God is a savour of death unto death even more than of 
 life unto life. There is something perplexing to us in 
 this attitude of the prophets towards the effect of their 
 message. It is partly to be explained, no doubt, by the 
 tendency of the religious mind of the Old Testament 
 to refer all things directly to the will of God. It may be 
 that with their profound faith in divine sovereignty the 
 prophets could not distinguish in the result between 
 what was the essential purpose of God and what was 
 due to the reaction of human freedom against that 
 purpose. That which was the inevitable effect of their 
 preaching was identified with the intention of Yahwe 
 in sending them to preach; and there were times when 
 this judicial aspect of their mission filled the whole 
 horizon of their thought. If we criticise their position 
 from the standpoint of the Christian idea of God, we 
 are only thrown back on a mysterious law of the spiritual 
 world which is frequently appealed to in the New Testa- 
 ment. In the light of a fuller revelation of the character 
 of God it is, indeed, impossible to think of His purpose 
 except as a purpose of grace and mercy which, while 
 respecting the independence of created personalities, 
 and working patiently to evoke the free response of 
 their will, genuinely seeks the salvation of all through 
 
 S.P.R. H
 
 162 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH 
 
 the revelation of the truth. Yet on the other hand the 
 moral universe is so constituted by its Maker that the 
 sinful abuse of freedom brings its own punishment in 
 hardening of the conscience, and a growing incapacity 
 for fellowship with God. Thus it is true that God sent 
 not His Son into the world to condemn the world, and 
 yet by his coming the world is condemned. 'And this 
 is the judgment, that light is come into the world, and 
 men loved darkness rather than light, because their 
 works were evil' (John iii. 19). This is the permanent 
 religious fact which underlies the stern predestinarian 
 doctrine of the prophets, and is the basis of their 
 assurance that the purpose of Yahwe will finally prevail 
 in spite of the sin and unbelief of men. 
 
 Is this, however, Jeremiah's final word on Yahwe's 
 purpose with Israel ? The question is relevant, because 
 it happens that the classical illustration of the divine 
 sovereignty the image of the potter and the clay 1 
 seems to have originated with Jeremiah; and we 
 naturally inquire what truth it conveyed to his mind. 
 He tells us at the beginning of ch. xviii how it first 
 came to him. He found himself one day in a potter's 
 workshop in the lower quarter of Jerusalem, intently 
 watching the process by which he deftly fashioned on 
 the wheel out of one clay different vessels just as he 
 chose. He saw that the potter was not always immedi- 
 ately successful. Something would go wrong, and then 
 he would squeeze the clay into a shapeless lump and 
 start afresh, till he attained the result he sought. The 
 prophet's thoughts were at this time occupied with the 
 problem of his people's fate; and a sudden inspiration 
 revealed to him the analogy between the work of the 
 potter and Yahwe's dealings with Israel. He realised 
 that it was no chance impulse that had moved him to 
 
 1 See Isa. xxix. 16, xlv. 9, Ixiv. 8; Wisd. Sol. xv. 7; Sirach xxxiii. 14; 
 Rom. ix. 21.
 
 vmj THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST 163 
 
 go down to the potter's house that day; he had been 
 led thither by the hand of God that he might receive 
 the message enunciated in v. 6: 'Can I not like this 
 potter do with you, house of Israel ? Behold, like potter's 
 clay are ye in My hand.' 
 
 There is no reason to question the reality of the 
 incident, or the authenticity of the oracle so far as I 
 have quoted it. The following verses (7-10) interpret 
 the analogy in a sense so remote from its plain implica- 
 tions that they must be set down as the well-meant 
 homily of an over-zealous commentator. Jeremiah's own 
 interpretation as given in v. 6 stops short with an 
 assertion of the barren doctrine that Yahwe can do 
 with His people whatsoever He chooses. But is that 
 the whole of the lesson he learned in the potter's house? 
 We cannot say that that is impossible; and yet the 
 image suggests so much more to us that we can scarcely 
 think the prophet himself did not find in it a more 
 consoling idea than he has put into words. For surely 
 the interest of his observation lies in the potter's treat- 
 ment of the spoiled vessel. He is not content with 
 crushing it; he does not throw it away, but begins anew 
 and fashions out of it another vessel 'as seemed good 
 in his eyes.' All that is meaningless if Yahwe's power 
 over Israel is to be manifested only by its destruction. 
 'As seemed good in His eyes!' The phrase in itself 
 may not carry us very far. It may mean nothing more 
 than 'according to His arbitrary pleasure 1 .' But even 
 so, if it was Yahwe's pleasure to make of the same clay 
 'another vessel,' must He not have in His heart some 
 grand design which had been thwarted once but could 
 not be defeated finally? So the lesson of the potter's 
 wheel spells itself out to us; and while we cannot be 
 certain that Jeremiah read all this into it, we have no 
 reason to say he did not. We may believe that the truth 
 1 Deut. xii. 8; Jud. xvii. 6; Prov. xii. 15, xxi. 2, etc.
 
 1 64 THE PROPHET AS MORAL ANALYST [CH. vm 
 
 which dawned on him is that Israel is in the hands of 
 an omnipotent and gracious God, whose inflexible 
 justice compels Him to crush to the dust the pride of 
 the old Israel the 'worthless vessel' (Hos. viii. 8) 
 but who will out of its ruin create a new people of God, 
 formed for Himself to set forth His praise I . 
 
 Whether consciously or unconsciously, Jeremiah has 
 thus found the fitting emblem for the highest con- 
 ception man can form of the divine sovereignty in 
 relation to human freedom. God wills the perfection of 
 His creatures; and though there is that in human 
 nature which resists and retards the accomplishment of 
 His purpose, and may seem to frustrate a long course 
 of patient discipline, the Almighty worker does not 
 forsake the work of His hands, but labours persistently, 
 unceasingly, and in the end effectually, for the recon- 
 ciliation of all things to Himself. To Jeremiah as to the 
 Apostle, the last word on the mystery of predestination 
 is a doxology : ' O the depth of the riches both of the 
 wisdom and the knowledge of God ! How unsearchable 
 are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!... 
 For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all 
 things. To Him be the glory for ever. Amen' (Rom. xi. 
 33> 36). 
 
 1 Comp. Buttenwieser, op. at. p. 210.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 UNREAL WORSHIP TEMPLE AND 
 SACRIFICE 
 
 WE have seen in a previous chapter 1 that the 
 Deuteronomic reformation culminated in the 
 centralisation of the national worship in the Temple at 
 Jerusalem. That, indeed, so far as appears, was the one 
 tangible and enduring result of the spiritual movement 
 which finds expression in the book of Deuteronomy. 
 The ethical demands of the Covenant failed to touch 
 the conscience of the nation, and in spite of the good 
 example of the king (Jer. xxii. 15 f.) there is no evidence 
 of any sustained or successful effort to purify public life 
 from the abuses which had called forth the denuncia- 
 tions of the prophets. As has often happened in the 
 history of religion, that which was begun in the spirit 
 was perfected in the flesh. The high ideal cherished by 
 the best minds of the prophetic party, of a holy and 
 righteous community living in moral fellowship with 
 Yahwe and assured of His protection, degenerated into 
 an empty formalism which substituted a superstitious 
 reverence for the Temple for love to God and obedience 
 to His will. The Temple became, even more than the 
 Law-book, the talisman of the spurious piety that 
 sprang up in the latter half of Josiah's reign; and 
 although this was not wholly due to the influence of 
 Deuteronomy, there can be no doubt that the enforce- 
 ment of the law of the One Sanctuary was a powerful 
 incentive to the popular delusion of its inherent sanctity. 
 It is an instructive fact in the history of prophecy 
 that this Temple-superstition was in part a heritage 
 
 1 PP-94-f-
 
 166 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 from the ministry of Isaiah. Isaiah's doctrine of the 
 inviolability of Yahwe's earthly sanctuary on mount 
 Zion is a somewhat elusive part of his theology. It 
 seems to rest on a mystic interpretation of the local 
 presence of Yahwe in His Temple as a symbol of the 
 unseen divine order about to be revealed through His 
 intervention in the history of the world. As the 'waters 
 of Shiloah that go softly' (viii. 6) are a type of God's 
 continuous but secret working in the present, so the 
 foundation laid in Zion (xxviii. 16) is a pledge to faith 
 of the indestructibility of the true Israel in the impend- 
 ing crisis of judgment. These are fundamental convic- 
 tions with Isaiah, and in so far as mount Zion is the 
 material image of such ideas we can understand the 
 place which it occupies in the prophet's thought. But 
 it is clear that the representation is not merely ideal or 
 figurative. In the later prophecies of Isaiah it assumes 
 a concrete form, becoming the ground of his assurance 
 that the sacred mount will prove impregnable to the 
 assault of the Assyrian world-power. The signal veri- 
 fication of this presentiment in the destruction of 
 Sennacherib's army made a profound impression on the 
 popular imagination; but it was an impression which 
 allowed the spiritual presuppositions of Isaiah's faith 
 to evaporate. To him the deliverance of Jerusalem had 
 meant * something far greater than the raising of a siege 
 and the annihilation of an army. He had expected that 
 the arm of the Lord would be recognised in this 
 deliverance, and that the chastened spirit which had 
 been evoked by those days of anxiety and fear would 
 ripen into a genuine national conversion. He had 
 looked, in short, for the emergence at last of the 
 Remnant of penitent and believing Israelites who after 
 the great catastrophe would form the nucleus of the 
 future kingdom of God 1 .' These hopes were frustrated 
 
 1 Cambridge Bible \ Isaiah (1915), i, p. xliv.
 
 ix] TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 167 
 
 by the impenitence and blindness of the people, the 
 only practical fruit of the crisis being an abortive 
 attempt to root out the heathenism of the provincial 
 sanctuaries on the lines afterwards followed by the 
 Deuteronomic reformers. On the nation as a whole the 
 vindication of Isaiah's faith had no other effect than to 
 foster a belief in the inviolability of the Temple, which 
 ultimately hardened into a dogma of the popular religion. 
 How far the reforming prophetic party was ready to 
 compromise with this tendency we are in no position 
 to judge. Since they looked back to Isaiah as their 
 founder it is natural to suppose that their view of the 
 Temple as Yahwe's dwelling-place was based on his 
 teaching, although it is more than probable that the 
 notion of empirical inviolability tended to dissociate 
 itself in their view from the spiritual intuitions which 
 gave religious worth to the conception. At the same time 
 it must be insisted, in opposition to a common critical 
 opinion, that the book of Deuteronomy itself lays no 
 stress whatever on the peculiar claim of Jerusalem to 
 be the one place of worship, and is entirely free from 
 any suggestion of a magical connexion between Yahwe 
 and the Temple. The materialistic idea of the sacredness 
 of the Temple was but a crude popular perversion of 
 the essential principle of the Deuteronomic legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 That Jeremiah had watched the growth of this 
 superstition with a clear perception of its deadening 
 effect on the religious life of the people, appears first 
 of all from a poetic fragment, of unknown date, pre- 
 served in ch. xi. 1 5 f. The superior text of the LXX 
 enables us to recover the general idea, although the 
 rendering given is very uncertain in details. Yahwe is 
 the speaker: 
 
 J 5What has My darling to do in My house? 
 Vile are her doings !
 
 i68 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 Can scraps of fat and sacred flesh 
 Turn calamity from thee? 
 Then might'st thou rejoice! 
 
 J< > An olive-tree, green, resplendent in beauty! 
 
 So wert thou called. 
 With noise of furious storm wind (?) 
 Its foliage is blasted, 
 Its branches destroyed 1 ! 
 
 Here we have an utterance of Jeremiah's private 
 reflexions on the new attitude of the people to the 
 Temple and its worship. As he stands in the crowded 
 court beholding the multitude at its devotions, his 
 spirit is stirred, and the question rises to his lips, What 
 do they mean by it ? What can God think of it ? Are 
 these men so oblivious of the character of the Being 
 whom they ignorantly worship as to imagine that the 
 performance of sacrificial rites in a sacred place will 
 answer His demands, or avert His wrath? In a striking 
 image, derived perhaps (as Duhm suggests) from some 
 allusion in a Temple-hymn, the prophet sees Israel, 
 once like an evergreen olive-tree in the house of its 
 God (Psa. Hi. io[8]), blasted and withered by a sudden 
 and irremediable stroke of divine judgment. Now these, 
 as Cornill has already pointed out, are precisely the 
 thoughts which were to find public expression in the 
 famous Temple-oration of the time of Jehoiakim, to 
 which we now turn. 
 
 It may well be that the pressure of a grave national 
 crisis was needed to reveal even to Jeremiah the full 
 extent of the hold which this obsession had obtained 
 on the minds of his contemporaries. Such a crisis was 
 brought about by the disastrous battle of Megiddo, in 
 which Josiah was slain; and that event must have been 
 
 1 I make no attempt to justify the conjectural translation of 16 b. 
 The passage is hopelessly corrupt in all versions.
 
 ix] TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 169 
 
 still fresh in public memory when the prophet felt 
 himself called by God to warn the people of their 
 delusion. He found his opportunity at a great convoca- 
 tion in the Temple court in the beginning of the reign 
 of Jehoiakim (xxvi. I ff.). If we could accept an attractive 
 conjecture of Wellhausen, we might find a suitable 
 occasion for this concourse in the tidings of Josiah's 
 defeat and death, which caused a spontaneous rush of 
 the populace to the Temple, as the sole surviving stay 
 of their faith in Yahwe. This reading of the situation 
 derives some support from the fact that in the very 
 circumstantial narrative of ch. xxvi a king is never 
 mentioned. But the exclamation 'We are delivered 1 ' 
 in vii. 10 seems to show that the dominant mood was 
 one of relief rather than of panic and dismay. It would 
 seem, therefore, that a somewhat later occasion is 
 indicated Duhm suggests the coronation of Jehoiakim 
 when a more cheerful spirit prevailed, and the belief in 
 the inviolability of the sanctuary drew fresh encourage- 
 ment from the fact that the State had been preserved, 
 and a native monarch still sat on the throne of David. 
 Be that as it may, the defeat of Josiah had dealt a 
 shattering blow to the illusory hopes that had grown 
 up under the shadow of the Covenant. Men had 'looked 
 for peace, but good came not : for a time of healing, and 
 lo! sudden terror!' (viii. 15, xiv. 19). And it is significant 
 that just at this time the Temple superstition emerges 
 in unabated strength and vitality. It goes far to prove 
 that reliance on the Covenant as a formal compact 
 between Yahwe and the nation, and a spurious rever- 
 ence for the Temple, were distinct and separable factors 
 in the religion of the time, so that when the former 
 collapsed under a stroke of adverse fortune the latter 
 
 : for which, however, Cornill would read U/SfJ : 'Deliver 
 us.'
 
 170 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 survived as a fanatical conviction in the popular mind. 
 Incidentally, it warns us against the error of so con- 
 fusing the two things that a protest against the cruder 
 superstition is mistaken for an indirect polemic against 
 Deuteronomy itself. Deuteronomy had doubtless done 
 much to enhance the prestige of the central sanctuary, 
 but it had been far from the intention of its authors to 
 make the Temple a fetish; and there is nothing in 
 Jeremiah's attitude at this juncture which can fairly be 
 construed as antagonism to the religious aims which 
 had animated the party of reform. 
 
 Let us look, then, at the words spoken by Jeremiah 
 on this occasion. They are recorded in two forms, 
 substantially identical, but with significant variations. 
 There is a condensed report from a biographer in 
 xxvi. 46, and a fuller account, presumably based on 
 Jeremiah's own memoirs, in vii. 3 i^ 1 . The latter, 
 however, consists of two dissimilar parts. The first half 
 (vv. 37) is a conditional promise of continued possession 
 of the land, if the people will amend their sinful lives; 
 it is largely made up of stereotyped editorial formulae; 
 and, apart from the words of the people quoted in v. 4, 
 has nothing to do with the Temple. The second half 
 (vv. 815) is an absolute prediction of the devastation 
 of the sanctuary and the rejection of the nation, slightly 
 amplified by a later hand, but distinguished by a force 
 and originality of expression which vouch for its sub- 
 stantial authenticity. These represent irreconcileable 
 points of view; and we must assume either that two 
 different addresses of Jeremiah, delivered on different 
 occasions, have been amalgamated, or (what is much 
 more probable) that vv. 37 are a supplementary 
 composition by a Deuteronomic commentator, such as 
 we frequently find in the book. Fortunately, a very 
 
 1 It is no longer questioned by critics that vii. i-i 5 and xxvi refer to 
 the same incident.
 
 ix] TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 171 
 
 slight change suffices to make w. 8-15 an independent 
 whole: we have only to supply in v. 8 the 'lying words' 
 cited in v. 4 from the mouth of the people. With this 
 insertion, and the omission of redundant relative 
 clauses, the actual speech delivered by Jeremiah will 
 read somewhat as follows: 
 
 Thus saith Yahwe: 
 
 Trust not in these misleading words, 'The palace of 
 Yahwe, the palace of Yahwe, the palace of Yahwe, is all this ! ' 
 What? Steal and murder! and commit adultery! and swear 
 falsely! and sacrifice to Baal! and then come and stand before 
 Me in this house and say 'We are delivered': in order to 
 perpetrate all these abominations! Is it a robbers' den that you 
 take My house for? Verily as such do I also regard it, saith 
 Yahwe. But go now to My sanctuary which was in Shilo, where 
 I placed My name at first, and see what I did to it because of 
 the wickedness of My people Israel. And now because you do 
 all these deeds, I will do to this house in which you trust as I 
 did to Shiloh; I will cast you out from My presence as I cast out 
 your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim. 
 
 The summary in ch. xxvi gives a slightly different 
 turn to the discourse by introducing the element of 
 contingency which is excluded by the terms of vii. 815: 
 '//ye will not listen to Me...//fo# I will make this house 
 like Shiloh.' But it is doubtful if this be the actual form 
 of the address. Certainly, the priests at least took it up 
 as an unqualified threat (v. 9); although Jeremiah 
 allows that if the people will mend their ways Yahwe 
 will alter His purpose, yet throughout the proceedings 
 he is accused and defended and ultimately acquitted 
 as one who has uttered a categorical prediction. We may 
 therefore conclude that the prophecy was absolute in 
 its terms, and that vii. 815 reproduce most nearly its 
 ipsissima verba. 
 
 Jeremiah must have known that he took his life in his
 
 1 72 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 hand when he went up to deliver this tremendous 
 message. It must have been the first time that he 
 publicly and explicitly announced the destruction of 
 the Temple and the holy city; and he knew that to do 
 so was to defy both the interests of the priesthood and 
 the fanaticism of the mob. The effect of his words was 
 comparable to that of Amos's first announcement of the 
 downfall of Israel in the royal sanctuary at Bethel in 
 the time of Jeroboam II (Amos vii. 10 ff.). But the old 
 respect for the ofHce of a prophet, which had shielded 
 Amos from personal violence, had been undermined by 
 the persecuting regime of Manasseh, and the priests had 
 no difficulty in inciting the populace to an assault on 
 Jeremiah's life. Happily, the freedom of prophesying 
 still found its champions in that tumultuous assembly; 
 and through the intervention of the lay aristocracy and 
 certain 'elders of the land* Jeremiah was set free. The 
 circumstances of his escape are dealt with in the note 
 below, and need not divert our attention from the 
 matters which more immediately interest us: viz. the 
 meaning of this prophetic repudiation of the Temple 
 and its worship, and in particular the contrast which it 
 reveals between the prophetic and the Deuteronomic 
 ideals of religion r . 
 
 1 With regard to the manner of Jeremiah's escape, Professor Butten- 
 wieser {Prophets of Israel, pp. 24 ff.) propounds a novel and ingenious 
 theory which raises a very important question concerning the attitude of 
 the Deuteronomists to the prophets. On the usual reading of ch. xxvi 
 the bench of nobles at once acquitted Jeremiah on the ground that his 
 prophetic inspiration secured for him the right of free speech in public: 
 'No capital charge lies against this man, for in the name of Yah we our 
 God he has spoken to us' (v. 16). The argument is then clinched by 
 the precedent of Micah the Morasthite cited by some of the provincial 
 elders who were present (vv. 1719). The part assigned to Ahikam the 
 son of Shaphan in v. 24 is left utterly obscure. Now, Buttenwieser, by 
 changing a single word in v . 16 (j^ to pj<: I Sam. xxi. 9), turns the 
 
 negative sentence into an affirmative, and explains the situation as follows :
 
 ix] TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 173 
 
 We may take it for granted that no honest Deutero- 
 nomist would have regarded Jeremiah's words as a 
 
 The judges after hearing Jeremiah's defence pronounce sentence of 
 death: 'Verily this man has incurred the death penalty, for in the name 
 of Yahwe our God he has spoken to us.' Against this decision some of the 
 country elders protest, appealing to the case of Micah. But their protest 
 is overruled; and in the end Jeremiah owes his deliverance to an 
 individual, Ahikam, who contrives to 'spirit him away' in some manner 
 not described. It must be recognised that this theory, if it could be 
 substantiated, would offer a perfectly intelligible view of the proceedings, 
 and would even improve the consecutiveness of the narrative. But it 
 seems to me to be cumbered with insuperable difficulties, of which the 
 grammatical change proposed for v. 16 is the least. The crucial question 
 is, How could prophesying in the name of Yahwe be in itself a ground 
 of condemnation? Buttenwieser's answer is based on the law of prophecy 
 in Deut. xviii. 20-22, a passage which, he believes, has been misunder- 
 stood by all expositors. The point of that enactment he takes to be that 
 the prophet who presumes in the name of Yahwe to speak contrary to 
 the law (of Deuteronomy) shall be put to death. To speak against the 
 law is itself an offence, whether punishable by death or not, but to do 
 so in the name of Yahwe constitutes a capital crime. This Jeremiah, by 
 his own confession (vv. 1215) ^ ac ^ done; hence his case comes under 
 the statute, and sentence is pronounced accordingly. But Deut. xviii. 
 20 ff. cannot possibly have the sense which is thus put upon it. It is a 
 baseless suggestion that the passage is intended to safeguard the authority 
 of the law against the teaching of such prophets as Amos, Isaiah, Micah 
 and Jeremiah. There is not a word to suggest legal restriction of the 
 freedom of true prophecy, but on the contrary an explicit affirmation 
 of its right to declare whatsoever Yahwe has commanded (vv. 13 f.). 
 Nor is anything said about speaking contrary to the law. To translate 
 
 the words JO K^ "DIM PINT tfSl in v. 22 by 'that which shall not 
 be nor occur' meaning that which is opposed to the principles of 
 Deuteronomy is a sheer travesty of Hebrew syntax. V. 22 is the answer 
 to the question of v. 21: How shall we know the word which Yahwe 
 has not spoken? To express Buttenwieser's idea in Deuteronomic 
 phraseology the answer must have been: 'When a prophet speaks not 
 in accordance with the statutes and judgments which I am commanding 
 you this day, he speaks presumptuously in the name of Yahwe.' But the 
 real answer is: 'When a prophet speaks in the name of Yahwe, and the 
 word does not occur nor come to pass, that is the word which Yahwe has not 
 spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously ' (p1T2). Applying
 
 174 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 direct polemic against the law-book; for Cornill is 
 surely wrong in thinking that the expression ''the words 
 of falsehood' in vu. 4 and 8 can be understood as 
 referring to that book. The false words are the words 
 quoted from the mouth of the people possibly taught 
 to the people by the priests, but certainly not found in 
 Deuteronomy nor expressing an idea there inculcated. 
 It is another question whether a strict Deuteronomist 
 would have been whole-heartedly in sympathy with 
 Jeremiah's protest. He would have agreed that rever- 
 ence for the house of God was no substitute for moral 
 obedience, and that the Covenant had no validity unless 
 its ethical requirements were put in practice. But might 
 he not have felt that the prophet was too peremptory 
 and exigeant, a little too severe in his judgment on the 
 defective morals of the community, too unmindful of 
 the value of even a formal recognition of God, and 
 much too hasty in his conclusion that the reformation 
 
 this to the case of Jeremiah, we see (a) that from beginning to end there 
 is no hint that he had spoken against the law. (^) That he had spoken 
 in the name of Yahwe cannot be the gravamen of the charge brought 
 against him. His real offence was to have spoken against the Temple 
 and the city (vv. 9, 1 1 ; cf. v. 12): that he had falsely presumed to do so 
 in the name of Yahwe could only be at most an aggravating circum- 
 stance. Now this real offence is not referred to at all in the verdict of the 
 nobles, nor is there any suggestion that his pretension to inspiration was 
 false. If the last clause of v. 16 were a reason for condemnation in 
 accordance with Deut. xviii. 22, it would at least have required the 
 Deuteronomic word p*"tt!il (presumptuously) to be added, (c) The 
 
 theory makes Jeremiah and his judges to play at cross purposes. To the 
 accusation that he has prophesied against the city, he replies that he has 
 spoken in the name of Yahwe. It is unnatural to suppose that what was 
 a plea of 'not guilty' on the lips of the prophet should turn into a verdict 
 of 'guilty' on the part of the judges, without any indication that his 
 claim was denied. We are therefore obliged, at whatever cost to the 
 orderliness of the narrative, to fall back on the commonly accepted view 
 that the judges decided in favour of Jeremiah, that they were supported 
 by the elders of the land, and that after all Ahikam the son of Shaphan 
 had to interpose to prevent him from being lynched.
 
 ix] TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 175 
 
 had finally failed ? To suppose that such thoughts were 
 in the minds of many good men in Judah is no more 
 than to do justice to the sincerity of those whose religious 
 aspirations were satisfied by the Deuteronomic ideal. 
 To understand Jeremiah, we must realise the difference 
 between his position and theirs; and the difference 
 comes openly to light in the Temple address. 
 
 In the first place, Jeremiah declares that the public 
 religion, the religion of which the Temple is the centre 
 and symbol, is an organised hypocrisy. In it religion 
 was divorced from morality as completely as in the 
 earlier days when worship was accompanied by flagrant 
 immoralities. Men whose daily lives were a violation 
 of every law of God presented themselves in the Temple, 
 in the fond belief that its inherent sanctity ensured the 
 stability of the social order within which they could 
 practise their 'abominations' with impunity. It may 
 be difficult to tell how much of pure superstition 
 mingled with their worship, and how far it was down- 
 right hypocrisy; the line between worship of an unethical 
 power and unethical worship of a spiritual Being is 
 hard to draw; and Jeremiah's condemnation applies to 
 both alike. The Temple, he says in effect, is not what 
 men call it or imagine it to be, but what by their actions 
 they make it. It might have been the place where 
 Yahwe's gracious presence was experienced if they had 
 hallowed His name by lives lived in piety and righteous- 
 ness; but used as they use it it has become even in 
 Yahwe's eyes a cave for robbers to shelter themselves in. 
 
 Now the Deuteronomists must certainly be acquitted 
 of any intention to bring about this state of things. 
 They set out to organise religion, and in that they had 
 achieved a considerable outward success. They did not 
 see, however, that true religion is not a thing that can 
 be organised. It must spring spontaneously from the 
 contact of the human spirit with the living God; and
 
 1 76 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 the attempt to manipulate it from without can only 
 result in its counterfeit, hypocrisy. The prophet may 
 utterly fail to evoke the spirit of religion in his hearers; 
 but at least he knows the real thing when he sees it, and 
 stedfastly refuses to be put off with a sham. The mere 
 reformer, on the other hand, is apt to compromise with 
 appearances, and to think that when he has established 
 a formal observance of religious ordinances he has 
 gained much, though less than he could have wished. 
 These two types of mind confront each other in Jere- 
 miah and the better representatives of the Deuteronomic 
 point of view. To the latter it would seem a hopeful 
 sign that the Temple court was thronged day by day 
 by reverent worshippers, even if their lives fell short of 
 their profession. To Jeremiah it was simply a profana- 
 tion of the holiness of God, and the most hopeless 
 spectacle that the mind could contemplate. It was 
 nothing to him that the reformers had meant well; he 
 is concerned with the realities of the situation, and 
 judging the movement by its fruits he pronounces it a 
 sowing among thorns. 
 
 Accordingly, in the second place, Jeremiah announces 
 that since the Temple has become the symbol of a false 
 religion God is about to make an end of it, and with it 
 of the nation which trusted in it. He does this, as we 
 have seen, categorically, not as a conditional threat or 
 warning, but as a fixed purpose of Yahwe. Here again 
 he places himself in direct opposition to the Deutero- 
 nomic policy even in its most creditable aim. The 
 leading principle of that policy was to save the State 
 by putting its religious institutions on a footing worthy 
 of the character, and deserving of the favour, of the 
 nation's God. The book of Deuteronomy abounds in 
 conditional threats, alternating with promises, meant 
 to keep the people loyal to the national Covenant on 
 which its preservation depended: if its authors could
 
 ix] TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 177 
 
 have believed that an irrevocable doom hung over the 
 State they would never have put their hands to the 
 work. It is neither surprising nor blameworthy that 
 they failed to recognise the absolute character of the 
 prophetic announcements on this subject. We have 
 referred in a previous connexion 1 to the difficulty of 
 distinguishing the absolute element in prediction from 
 the element of contingency which is involved in a call 
 to repentance; and indeed it would seem that the 
 prophets themselves were not always clear whether 
 their utterances partook more of the one character or of 
 the other. Still there were predictions whose absolute 
 import was for the moment unmistakable, and this 
 Temple address of Jeremiah is one of them. The 
 priests who heard it had no doubt on that point, and 
 the elders who opposed them could only defend the 
 prophet by citing the equally absolute prediction of 
 Micah which had nevertheless not been fulfilled. That, 
 no doubt, implies a belief that no prediction is really 
 absolute in the final sense that its fulfilment is inevitable; 
 but it does not alter the fact that Jeremiah had pro- 
 nounced the doom of the Temple to be as certain as the 
 fate that had overtaken the old sanctuary of Shiloh. And 
 this was a position which could in no way be reconciled 
 with the fundamental conceptions of the Deuteronomic 
 party. 
 
 In the Temple address, therefore, the prophet parts 
 company with the reformers, or those of them who 
 still clung to the hope that by the accomplished re- 
 formation the State had been saved. The difference 
 between them was at last exposed, and it concerned the 
 essence of religion. To Jeremiah religion was reality 
 real fellowship with a real moral deity, and whatever 
 obscured that relationship was a hindrance to religion 
 and must be swept away. To the men who had taken 
 
 1 PP- 74 ff-
 
 178 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 control of the Deuteronomic movement, and were now 
 the spiritual leaders of the people, religion was a form 
 a mere profession of homage expressed in ceremonial 
 functions; and to such religion the Temple and its 
 ritual were the necessary channels of communication 
 between God and His people. A God who could 
 destroy the Temple was a God whom they did not 
 understand and could not worship. Yet He was the 
 God of the prophets, and events speedily proved that 
 He was the God of history. The lesson of history was 
 too hard for that age to learn, and was to remain 
 unlearned for centuries. To the Jews of Christ's day 
 the second Temple was what the first had been to 
 priest and people in the time of Jeremiah : a pledge of 
 God's presence, and a rallying-point for the fanaticism 
 which a superstitious faith always engenders. Jeremiah's 
 polemic against the sanctity of the Temple was but the 
 prelude to the final emancipation of the spirit of religion 
 from the forms of a local and material worship; and the 
 first Christian martyr completed what was lacking in 
 the sufferings of Jeremiah by testifying that Jesus of 
 Nazareth would 'destroy this holy place.' The victory 
 of the new faith was not secure until the Master's 
 words were fulfilled : * Seest thou these great buildings ? 
 There shall not be left here one stone upon another 
 which shall not be thrown down 1 .' 
 
 A condemnation of the Temple worship necessarily 
 implied a judgment on the value of the sacrificial system 
 as a whole. This is the theme of another Temple address 
 by Jeremiah, which has been preserved in the sequel 
 of the great discourse which we have just considered 
 (ch. vii. 2123). The denunciation of public worship 
 as practised in the sanctuaries of their time had always 
 been a prominent feature in the preaching of the pre- 
 
 1 Acts vi. 14; Mark ziii. 2, etc.
 
 ix] TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 179 
 
 exilic prophets. This note is struck with passionate 
 emphasis in the first proclamation of the prophetic 
 gospel by Amos. 'I hate, I despise your processions, 
 And have no relish for your festivals: Your sacrificial 
 gifts I abhor, And I will not look on your offerings of 
 fatlings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs : 
 Your harp-playing I will not hear. But let justice flow 
 like water, And righteousness like a perennial stream. 
 Did you bring sacrifices and offerings to Me In the 
 wilderness forty years long, House of Israel? saith 
 Yahwe...' (Amos v. 21-25; cf. iv. 4ff., v. 46.). With 
 equal vehemence Isaiah declaims against the ritual of 
 the Temple at Jerusalem, and asserts its incompati- 
 bility with the character of Yahwe. ' What to Me are 
 your many sacrifices? saith Yahwe; I am sated with 
 holocausts of rams, And fat of fed beasts. In blood of 
 bullocks and he-goats I delight not. When you come 
 to see my face, Who has required this at your hand? 
 Trample My courts no more : Bringing of gifts is vain, 
 Sacrificial smoke is abomination to Me. New moon 
 and sabbath I cannot endure; Fasting and sacred 
 seasons My soul hateth, They are a burden to Me: I 
 am weary of bearing it. Yea, when you spread out your 
 hands I will hide My face from you; Yea, when you 
 make many prayers I will not hear. Your hands are full 
 of blood...' (Isa. i. 1 1 15)'. Hosea teaches the same 
 doctrine in a very compact, if less absolute form: 'I 
 delight in goodness and not sacrifice; And in knowledge 
 of God apart from burnt-offerings' (Hos. vi. 6); he 
 speaks scornfully of the Israelites going with their 
 flocks and herds to seek Yahwe, and not finding Him 
 (v. 6; cf. iv. 19). In the undisputed prophecies of 
 Micah (chs. i iii) there is no express mention of cultus; 
 but in a later chapter of the book, commonly assigned 
 
 1 For slight changes and omissions in the text, see Dr Gray's com- 
 mentary. 
 
 IZ 2
 
 180 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 to the reign of Manasseh, the prophetic point of view 
 comes to its clearest and most eloquent expression. 
 'Wherewith shall I come before Yahwe, And bow 
 before God on high? Does Yahwe take pleasure in 
 thousands of rams, In myriads of rivers of oil ? Shall I 
 give my firstborn for my transgression? The fruit of 
 my body for the sin of my soul? It is told thee, O man, 
 what is good; and what Yahwe requires of thee: To 
 do justice, and love mercy. And to walk humbly with 
 thy God' (Micah vi. 6-8). 
 
 In these utterances of Jeremiah's precursors we have 
 a measure of the opposition between the prophetic and 
 the popular conceptions of religion. Ancient worship 
 culminated in animal sacrifice, and apart from sacrificial 
 worship religion could not exist. Sacrifice was the chief 
 and indispensable means of maintaining intercourse 
 between God and man. The bond uniting the deity and 
 his worshippers was conceived as a physical one, and 
 nothing was needed to keep it intact save the due 
 observance of the stated ritual. Morality might be 
 important, and transgressions of the divinely appointed 
 order might be punished by judgments more or less 
 severe; but the threatened breach could always be 
 healed, and the anger of the god appeased, by enhanced 
 zeal in the performance of sacrificial rites. How the 
 slaughter of animals had come to occupy this supreme 
 position in ancient ritual is not a question that greatly 
 concerns us here; it is enough that the act was uni- 
 versally regarded as the necessary condition of approach 
 to the deity, and of securing his favour. And that these 
 ideas permeated the popular religion of Israel in the 
 time of the prophets we see clearly from the passages 
 quoted above. To the people sacrifice was the vital part 
 of religion not only on the human side, but also on the 
 divine. Yahwe was as dependent on their service as they 
 were on His succour; if sacrifice were abolished the
 
 ix] TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 181 
 
 relation between them and their God would indeed be 
 dissolved, but as an unworshipped deity Yahwe would 
 no longer have a raison d'etre. Hence they concluded 
 that though Yahwe had a regard for morality, he must 
 have a still greater regard for His own honour, and 
 would never press His demand for righteousness so far 
 as to abandon the nation which did formal homage to 
 His divinity. And this, which to the popular view was 
 incredible, is precisely what the prophets maintained 
 that Yahwe was about to do. 
 
 Now it is commonly held that the prophets' repudi- 
 ation of sacrifice was not absolute, but relative to the 
 prevalent delusion that cultus apart from morality has 
 an inherent value in the sight of God. That is to say, 
 they did not reject sacrifice as such, but only as offered 
 by a people that had lost the true knowledge of God. 
 It seems clear, however, that the prophetic principle 
 goes further than that. Not only is sacrifice of no avail 
 as a substitute for righteous conduct, but a perfect 
 religious relationship is possible without sacrifice at all. 
 This is plainly taught by Amos when he points to the 
 forty years in the wilderness as a time when sacrifice 
 was unknown. There is no doubt that Amos shared 
 the view of Hosea that the desert sojourn was the ideal 
 period in Israel's history; and the obvious inference is 
 that if Yahwe could be properly served without sacrifice 
 then, He could be so still. Sacrifice, therefore, is no 
 necessary term of communion between Yahwe and 
 Israel: it does not belong to the essence of religion. 
 And that the principle extends to the cultus in general, 
 and was held by other prophets, is strongly suggested 
 by the fact that they never demand a purified ritual, 
 but always and exclusively the fulfilment of the ethical 
 commands of Yahwe . 
 
 1 In opposition to the view here expressed, Smend reminds us 
 {Alttest. Religionsgeschichte, p. 197 .) that the cultus which the prophets
 
 1 82 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. 
 
 This at all events is the obvious meaning of Jere- 
 miah's remarkable utterance in ch. vii. 21 ff. 'Add 
 your holocausts to your (private) sacrifices 1 and eat 
 flesh! For I did not speak with your fathers nor give 
 them commandment, in the day when I brought them 
 out of the land of Egypt, concerning holocaust and 
 sacrifice. But this thing I commanded them, Obey my 
 voice, etc/ The error here rebuked is not simply the 
 practical abuse of sacrificial ritual by men who sought 
 thus to compound for their moral delinquencies; it is 
 the notion that Yahwe had ever instituted sacrifice at 
 all. The whole system, and all laws prescribing or 
 regulating it, are declared to lie outside the revelation 
 on which the national religion of Israel was based. It 
 must have been hard for the prophet's hearers, and it 
 is not easy for us, to understand such a position in face 
 of the tradition which traced the origin of the most 
 ancient ritual codes to the authority of Moses. Jeremiah 
 makes no attempt to show how sacrifice had come to be 
 so deeply lodged in the ceremonial praxis of his people, 
 or to set himself right with the prevalent belief that it 
 was divinely ordained. His conviction of its non-essential 
 character is the outcome of his prophetic knowledge 
 of God, and is so strong that he is prepared to defy all 
 
 denounce is the cultus of a people with whom Yahwe is about to break 
 off relations, and that they had not before them the problem of how in 
 all respects the intercourse between God and people was to be realised 
 and expressed. That is true so far as it goes. But the prophets had the 
 problem in view at least so far as to hold up to their contemporaries the 
 ideal of a religion wholly based on moral fellowship between God and 
 man, and in which sacrificial worship was at best an irrelevance, and at 
 worst an offence. 
 
 1 HI 7$ and Q*niT : the point being of course that the former were 
 wholly consumed on the altar as an offering to Yahwe, whereas the 
 latter partly furnished the material of a feast to the worshippers. For 
 all Yahwe cares, says the prophet, you may eat the one along with the 
 other!
 
 ixj TEMPLE AND SACRIFICE 183 
 
 traditional opinion, and affirm that it could never have 
 been commanded by the God who had revealed Him- 
 self through Moses to Israel. And in this he makes 
 explicit the latent opposition between the prophetic 
 conception of religion and that which found in sacrifice 
 an indispensable means of communion with Yahwe. 
 
 But how, we must ask, does this declaration bear on 
 the prophet's estimate of the law of Deuteronomy? 
 The sacrificial element is not prominent in Deutero- 
 nomy, nor is it greatly emphasised, but it is there; 
 and moreover we cannot doubt that the acceptance of 
 the code had fostered the tendency to set undue value 
 on ritual as compared with moral duties. It would 
 appear, therefore, that the principle enunciated by 
 Jeremiah involves rejection of the claim of Deuteronomy 
 to be a divine law imposed on Israel. That is, in fact, 
 the only interpretation consistent with seriousness of 
 purpose on the part of the prophet. We cannot suppose 
 him capable of the ineptitude of solemnly denying that 
 God had instituted sacrifice at the Exodus while ad- 
 mitting that He had done so forty years later in the 
 land of Moab. Nor is it fair to say that he is using the 
 language of rhetorical exaggeration, or that he means 
 only to deny that sacrifice was the -primary interest of 
 the Mosaic legislation. His words strike at the root of 
 the common illusion which regarded sacrifice as an 
 essential constituent of the worship of Yahwe; and when 
 he asserts that God had given no law about it at the 
 beginning he must mean that such laws, whether found 
 in Deuteronomy or anywhere else, were unauthorised 
 additions to the covenant made with the fathers. It does 
 not follow of necessity that Jeremiah had been an 
 opponent of the reformation of which Deuteronomy 
 was the legal instrument, or that he could have taken 
 no part in promoting it. We cannot even say that he 
 saw reason to change his mind about the Code itself.
 
 1 84 UNREAL WORSHIP [CH. ix 
 
 He had never imagined that sacrifice was of the essence 
 of religion; but then it is by no means clear that the 
 Deuteronomists regard it as such. Their purpose was 
 not to insist on the necessity of sacrifice, but so to 
 regulate it as to purge it of heathenish abominations. 
 Jeremiah might well sympathise with this aim, looking 
 on the purification of the cult as a thing desirable in 
 itself, and fraught with no dangerous consequences to 
 religion. It was only when the people were being taught 
 that Temple and ritual were a sine qua non of religion, 
 and when the 'lying pen of the scribes' was busy 
 fabricating rules in this sense, that he took up the 
 strong position of branding these things as a hindrance 
 to true fellowship with God, and a perversion of the 
 historic religion of Israel from its native ethical genius.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 
 
 JTT^ROM an early period of his ministry Jeremiah had 
 JP recognised the disastrous influence of the two pro- 
 fessional religious orders in Jerusalem the Prophets 
 and the Priests. The alliance of these two classes for 
 selfish and venal ends is referred to as the most dis- 
 quieting symptom of the moral degeneracy of the 
 people. 'A monstrous and horrible thing has come to 
 pass in the land : the prophets prophesy falsely, and the 
 priests give Tor a at their side; and my people love it so; 
 and what will ye do at the end thereof?' (v. 30 f.). 
 ' For low and high they are all out for gain; from prophet 
 to priest they all deal in falsehood. And they heal 
 the hurt of my people superficially, saying, "Peace! 
 Peace!" when there is no peace' (vi. 13 f. = viii. 10 f.). 
 The distress which filled the prophet's mind at the 
 sight of this profanation of the most sacred institutions 
 of the national religion is powerfully expressed in an 
 oracle which probably belongs to his earlier years 
 (xxiii. 911): 
 
 9 Broken is my heart within me, 
 
 All my bones quiver ! 
 I am like a drunken man, 
 Like one overcome by wine. 
 Before Yah we and His glorious majesty. 
 
 10 For with adulterers the land is filled; 
 
 Their course is bad, their power not right. 
 11 Yea, both prophet and priest are profane: 
 
 'Even in My house I have found their wickedness': 
 Is Yahwe's oracle.
 
 1 86 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION [CH. 
 
 Of the priests as a separate body Jeremiah has not 
 much more to say; but the prophets of the type referred 
 to in these passages occupied much of his thought, and 
 called forth his severest censure. They were in large 
 measure responsible for the blind optimism and indiffer- 
 ence to moral issues which prevailed after the promulga- 
 tion of Deuteronomy. 'Then I said: "Ah, Lord Yahwe! 
 Behold the prophets are saying to them, Ye shall not 
 see the sword, and famine shall not come to you; but 
 assured peace I will give you in this place"' (xiv. 13). 
 They are for the most part a shadowy group in the 
 background of the picture; although one vigorous 
 personality of this stamp appears on the stage in 
 Hananiah of Gibeon, whose memorable encounter with 
 our prophet in the fourth year of Zedekiah throws an 
 instructive light on the opposition between the true 
 prophet and the false. 
 
 There is no mystery about the position or the ante- 
 cedents of this order of men in the Israelitish common- 
 wealth. They were the degenerate survivors of a phase 
 of prophecy which had once played an influential and 
 honourable part in the history of the national religion. 
 In its origin Hebrew prophecy had been the highest 
 expression of the national spirit, at a time when 
 patriotic and religious enthusiasm were one thing, and 
 the cause of Yahwe was identical with the cause of 
 Israel. Its inspiration was sustained by an indomitable 
 confidence in the future of Israel, founded on a lofty 
 conception of the power of Yahwe, and a firm belief in 
 His will to advance the interests of His people. This 
 was its characteristic down to the appearing of Elijah, 
 in whom for the first time religion is divorced from 
 patriotism, and the claims of Yahwe are seen to be so 
 absolute that they must be vindicated even at the cost
 
 x] PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 187 
 
 of Israel's destruction. And it is noteworthy that just 
 at this time we have the first indication of a schism in 
 the ranks of the prophets, in the dramatic scene where 
 Micaiah ben-Imlah stands alone before Ahab and 
 Jehoshaphat as a prophet of woe against 400 prophets 
 of Yahwe who assure the king of success in his enter- 
 prise against the Syrians (i Kings xxii). The incident 
 is typical of the whole subsequent development of 
 prophecy. The canonical prophets were a minority of 
 chosen individuals who read the signs of the times with 
 a clearer insight into the character of Yahwe and the 
 principles of His government than their contemporaries, 
 and who perceived that it was His purpose to bring 
 Israel's national existence to an end. The threatening 
 aspect of events, in which these prophets discerned the 
 signs of coming judgment, only stirred in their opponents 
 a fanatical enthusiasm for the national cause, which 
 broke out in the ecstatic manifestations which had 
 always been regarded as the mark of possession by the 
 spirit of Yahwe. False prophecy, in short, so far as it 
 had any root of sincerity, was fundamentally an unpro- 
 gressive survival of the ancient prophecy of Israel, 
 under conditions to which it was no longer adequate, 
 and under which it was apt to deteriorate into mere 
 flattery of the popular opinion, or even into a means of 
 livelihood (Mic. iii. 5-8). 
 
 The problem how to distinguish the true prophet 
 from the false was thus an old one in Israel, and was 
 beset by peculiar difficulties on the level of religious 
 knowledge on which the mass of the people stood. In 
 early times it had little or no ethical significance. A 
 prophecy was true if it was verified by the event; and a 
 true prophet was simply one whose vaticinations 
 uniformly proved to be correct : his moral character was 
 not in question. Samuel had the reputation of being a 
 true prophet because 'whatsoever he speaks unfailingly
 
 i88 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION [CH. 
 
 comes to pass' (i Sam. ix. 6). The question first be- 
 came of religious importance when the destinies of 
 the State were concerned; and especially when a suc- 
 cession of men appeared who consistently prophesied 
 national disaster, while the bulk of the order flattered 
 the hope of a brilliant future. In externals there was 
 nothing to distinguish the one kind of prophet from 
 the other. Both spoke in the name of Yahwe; both spoke 
 with the accent of personal conviction; and both could 
 appeal to ecstatic experiences as the seal of the genuine- 
 ness of their oracles. Yet they could not both be true 
 interpreters of the one thing which it was important 
 to know the actual purpose of Yahwe, which would 
 be fulfilled in history. Accordingly in the contest of 
 Micaiah with the 400, the question is expressly raised, 
 and answered in an unexpected fashion: 'Which way 
 went the spirit of Yahwe from me to speak by thee ? ' 
 Micaiah throws no doubt on the reality of his opponents' 
 inspiration: they were inspired, he says, to prophesy 
 falsely inspired by a lying spirit sent forth from Yahwe 
 to lure Ahab to his doom. For the rest he is content to 
 leave the issue to the arbitrament of events: 'Thou 
 shalt see in that day when thou goest into an inner 
 chamber to hide thyself; 'If thou return at all in peace, 
 Yahwe has not spoken by me' (vv. 25, 28). 
 
 Now this question has a unique place in the thinking 
 of Jeremiah. The canonical prophets before him had, 
 so far as we know, met opposition in the strength of 
 an immediate personal conviction of the truth of their 
 own message, and an inward certainty of the fulfilment 
 of their word, without attempting to explain the 
 phenomenon of spurious inspiration. But to Jeremiah's 
 introspective bent of mind a negative attitude was 
 perhaps impossible. He thoroughly understood the 
 influence which these false prophets had with the 
 people, and contrasted it sadly with the failure of his
 
 x] PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 189 
 
 own mission. He knew that he himself was classed as 
 one of the raving fanatics who appeared from time to 
 time in the Temple, exciting the populace by frenzied 
 oracles uttered with all the manifestations of inspired 
 possession (xxix. 26 f., xx. I f.). Nay, it would almost 
 appear as if he himself was liable to be impressed by 
 the extraordinary manner in which these men could 
 sometimes deliver their message. In his encounter with 
 Hananiah he seems to have quailed for a moment 
 before the vehemence of his opponent's enthusiasm, 
 and to have felt a misgiving as to whether he might not 
 be right. It required an interval of self-recollection to 
 regain the confidence to confront Hananiah with an 
 energy of conviction greater than his own (xxviii. 6 fF.). 
 It was imperative that he should inquire what criterion 
 of inspiration he possessed which justified him in be- 
 lieving that his own revelations were true and those of 
 his rivals false, that his own visions were real and theirs 
 delusions. 
 
 Moreover, the question was in the air in his time. 
 The contemporary book of Deuteronomy has two 
 passages dealing with false prophecy, though in a way 
 that shows little if any advance on the twofold position 
 of Micaiah. In ch. xiii the rule is laid down that 
 no prophet who seeks to seduce the people from their 
 allegiance to Yahwe is to be listened to under any 
 circumstances. Such a prophet, if he seems to be 
 authenticated by the fulfilment of some sign which he 
 has given, is sent by Yahwe, not indeed to mislead the 
 people, but to test its fidelity to His covenant. In ch. 
 xviii the seemingly inconsistent principle is enunciated, 
 that the false prophet is to be detected by the non- 
 verification of his predictions. The contradiction is 
 perhaps only apparent. In the first case the reference is 
 to a mere arbitrary sign attached to the alleged revela- 
 tion, which might or might not come to pass without
 
 190 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION [CH. 
 
 affecting the truth of the prophet's teaching; in the 
 second the thing predicted is the very substance of the 
 message itself. In each case, however, an objective norm 
 is set up by which the validity of a prophetic announce- 
 ment can be tested: in the one case, conformity to the 
 national religion; in the other, the course of events. The 
 authors of the Deuteronomic legislation were thus 
 aware of the dangers involved in the unrestrained 
 exercise of freedom of prophesying; and in their 
 attempt to regulate and control it, we have the first 
 intimation of the radical opposition between the written 
 code and the living voice of prophecy which ultimately 
 led to the extinction of the latter. 
 
 For all these reasons Jeremiah was held up by the 
 problem of inspiration as none of his predecessors had 
 been. In his treatment of it we find, not a theoretical 
 solution of the difficulties of the subject, but rather a 
 movement towards a clarification of the prophetic con- 
 sciousness which points forward to a higher level of 
 religion, at which the devout wish of the great founder 
 of Hebrew prophecy could be realised : ' Would that all 
 the Lord's people were prophets!' (Num. xi. 29). 
 
 II 
 
 Jeremiah's polemic against the popular prophets of 
 the time is mostly contained in a series of oracles 
 delivered at various dates, and collected in ch. xxiii. 
 9 ff., under the heading LANNEBPIM (' Concerning 
 the prophets'), and commencing with the striking lines 
 already quoted on p. 185. The passage has been con- 
 siderably amplified by commentators, especially towards 
 the end of the chapter; and it is difficult to tell precisely 
 how much of it was really written by Jeremiah. But 
 the main lines of his criticism are clearly discernible. 
 He declaims against the current prophecy of the day on 
 three grounds \ first ^ the character of its representatives;
 
 x] PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 191 
 
 secondly, the substance of their message; and thirdly, the 
 forms in which they gave it out as the word of Yahwe. 
 (i) Jeremiah repeatedly denounces the prophets as 
 men of immoral life. 
 J 3 In Samaria's prophets I saw unseemliness; 
 
 They prophesied by Baal and misled My people. 
 J 4 In Jerusalem's prophets I have seen a horror: 
 
 Adultery, walking in lies, and strengthening the hand of 
 
 ill-doers. 
 They are all to Me like Sodom, 
 
 As the inhabitants of Gomorrah (xxiii. 13, 14). 
 
 Similarly the false prophets who appeared among the 
 exiles in Babylon are accused of committing adultery 
 with their neighbours' wives (xxix. 23). And not only 
 do these prophets share in the prevalent vices of the 
 upper class (v. 7 ff.), not only do they place no check 
 on rampant wickedness (xxiii. 17); but the contagion 
 of their evil example is a chief source of the general 
 corruption of morals : ' From the prophets of Jerusalem 
 pollution has gone out through the whole land' (xxiii. 
 15). It is, of course, not necessary to suppose that a 
 sweeping class-judgment like this held true of every 
 member of the class. There were doubtless honest and 
 respectable individuals among them. But the scandal 
 must have been sufficiently notorious to throw discredit 
 on the whole style of teaching which emanated from that 
 class, and to destroy its pretensions to be the word of 
 God. And we can readily believe that men of the tem- 
 perament favourable to a spurious religious excitement 
 were peculiarly open to sensual temptation; while their 
 absence of moral courage led them first to flatter and 
 then to imitate the vices they failed to condemn. It is 
 above all this indifference to moral good or evil in the 
 social life of the people that stamps them as impostors 
 when they speak in the name of Him who is of eyes 
 too pure to behold iniquity. The mark of the true
 
 192 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION [CH. 
 
 prophet is that he strives to 'turn back My people 
 from their evil way' (xxiii. 22). His words and actions 
 approve themselves as in accord with the holy will of 
 God, and he gives his life to promote the extension of 
 true godliness in the nation to which he is sent. 
 
 (2) The teaching of these prophets corresponded to 
 their character. It was a message of peace to all and 
 sundry, without regard to their moral condition. 'They 
 keep on speaking to the scorners of Yahwe's word, 
 "Peace shall be yours" and to every one who walks in 
 the obduracy of his heart they say "No evil shall come 
 near you"' (xxiii. 17). In the true prophets the anticipa- 
 tion of the doom of the nation went hand in hand with 
 their judgment on its sinful condition; and in face of 
 their preaching it argued great shallowness of moral 
 perception to assure the people under all circumstances 
 of the favour and help of Yahwe. But these men, being 
 themselves destitute of high or strict principles of 
 morality, could see nothing in the state of the nation 
 calling for the righteous judgment of God. Their whole 
 effort was to produce a sense of security by proclaiming 
 'Peace, Peace,' when there was no peace. 
 
 In opposition to this tendency Jeremiah takes up a 
 position which might seem to us one-sided and extreme. 
 He appears to assert that only the prophet of disaster 
 is truly sent by Yahwe, that only the destructive, 
 annihilating prophetic word is the genuine word of 
 God. 'Is not my word like a fire, like a hammer that 
 shatters the rock?' (xxiii. 29). And in his challenge to 
 Hananiah he goes so far as to make it a mark of the 
 true prophet that he prophesies of war and famine and 
 pestilence; although he adds in qualification that a 
 prophet of peace may be recognised as truly inspired 
 provided his word comes to pass (xxviii. 8, 9). Obviously 
 some qualification is needed; for just about the same time 
 Jeremiah himself addressed a prophecy of hope to the
 
 x] PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 193 
 
 exiles in Babylon, and one that could not be tested by 
 fulfilment till after seventy years. But with regard to 
 the principle itself, it may have two implications. In 
 the first place, the chronic condition of the nation was 
 such that a prediction of judgment had a strong pre- 
 sumption in its favour. In the second place, any prophecy 
 which fell in with the natural disposition to look at the 
 bright side of things could be explained as of human 
 origin, and therefore needed attestation by the course 
 of providence before it could be accepted as divine. 
 More than this Jeremiah can hardly have meant. Laxity 
 of moral conviction and a readiness to prophesy smooth 
 things went naturally together. 
 
 (3) Lastly, Jeremiah holds that these prophets were 
 either deluded or dishonest in their use of the traditional 
 forms of prophetic revelation. 'Lying vision, and idle 
 divination, and deceit of the mind, is what they prophesy 
 to you' (xiv. 14). He sees the evidence of falsehood 
 first in the want of originality and independence : ' they 
 steal My words from one another' (xxiii. 30); next in 
 their mimicry of the prophetic mode of utterance : ' they 
 take their tongue and bring forth an oracular utter- 
 ance 1 '; and last in their palming off of lying dreams as 
 real prophetic visions (xxiii. 32). 
 
 Now, it is at this point that we might look for some 
 attempt to differentiate between the experience of the 
 true prophet and that of the false. If there is a possibility 
 of deception in this matter there must, we are apt to 
 think, be some valid criterion by which the revealing 
 activity of the divine spirit can be distinguished from 
 the ordinary operations of the mind. But it is doubtful 
 if any such criterion can be found in Jeremiah's treat- 
 ment of the problem. He uses three expressions to 
 
 1 DJO 1DW1 : that is, I take it, they simulate the peculiar intonation 
 which was supposed to be due to supernatural inspiration; and which 
 was no doubt characteristic of ecstatic speech. 
 
 S.P.R. 13
 
 i 9 4 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION [CH 
 
 describe the qualifications of the true prophet in con- 
 trast to the false, (a) He is one who has 'stood in the 
 council of Yahwe' (xxiii. 18, 22); () he has 'heard the 
 word of Yahwe' (xxiii. 18, 21, 28, xiv. 14); (c) he is 
 'sent' by Yahwe (xxiii. 21, 32, xiv. 14). If we knew the 
 right interpretation of these metaphors we might learn 
 what Jeremiah's view of genuine inspiration was. But 
 they are ambiguous, and leave us in uncertainty on the 
 crucial question of the significance he attached to the 
 ecstatic side of prophetic experience. Does this standing 
 in the council of Yahwe denote a visionary experience, 
 like the sublime scene described by Micaiah in I Kings 
 xxii. 1922, or a spiritual condition removed from 
 every trace of ecstasy ? Is hearing the word of Yahwe 
 to be understood as an audition which seems to proceed 
 from an external voice, or merely as an intuitive per- 
 ception of what the mind of Yahwe is? And similar 
 questions might be asked with regard to the conscious- 
 ness of being 'sent' or commissioned by Yahwe. Direct 
 answers to these questions cannot be given. But looking 
 to Jeremiah's teaching on this subject as a whole, and 
 comparing his utterances one with another, certain 
 fundamental positions may be laid down. 
 
 i . He has no psychological test by which true prophecy 
 can be distinguished from false. It might be thought 
 from some expressions that he assigns a superiority to 
 the audition over the vision, and again to the vision 
 over the dream. But even if there be some ground for 
 these distinctions, they are only relative, and do not 
 reach to the bottom of the problem. He knows that 
 there is a lying vision which originates in the human 
 mind; but there is also a true vision 'from the mouth 
 of Yahwe' (xxiii. 16); and such visions he undoubtedly 
 claims to have seen. But he does not pretend that there 
 is anything in the vision itself which will stamp it as 
 springing from the one source or the other. And all
 
 x] PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 195 
 
 investigation of the subjective phenomena of religion 
 confirms the conclusion that it is impossible to dis- 
 criminate between true inspiration and false by the 
 form of the experience through which ideas present 
 themselves to the mind. 
 
 2. The real test which Jeremiah applies to his 
 opponents is the test of morality. It is not so much in 
 the form of their prophetic experience as in the sub- 
 stance of their prophetic teaching that he discovers the 
 proof that they are no true spokesmen of Yahwe. In 
 their indifference to the sin of the people, in their 
 positive encouragement of evil-doers, and in their own 
 immoral lives, they proclaim their entire ignorance of 
 Yahwe's truth. It is the men themselves who are false; 
 and to a false heart no true revelation is vouchsafed. 
 Hence he knows that they are no accredited messengers 
 of the God whose essence is righteousness, that the 
 visions by which they seek to authenticate their message 
 cannot come from Him, and must therefore be in some 
 way the product of their own minds. 
 
 3. Jeremiah is conscious of standing in a personal 
 relation to God, which we may call confidential, and of 
 which the false prophets can have no experience. It is 
 expressed by the phrases already mentioned as descrip- 
 tive of the true prophet : he has stood in the council of 
 Yahwe, has heard his word, has been sent by Him. His 
 whole conscious life is pervaded by this conviction, 
 which had come to him at the moment of his call 
 that before his birth he had been predestined and con- 
 secrated to the mission of a prophet. It is this which 
 gives him the assurance that the truth which he per- 
 ceives, whether it come to him through a vision, or an 
 audition, or by direct spiritual intuition is a revelation 
 of the mind and will of Yahwe. This immediate 
 consciousness of having the mind of God is the ultimate 
 secret of true prophetic inspiration, which, being in- 
 
 132
 
 196 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION [CH. 
 
 communicable, can neither be analysed nor applied as 
 an objective criterion of an alleged revelation. It is 
 strictly analogous to the experience of religious certainty 
 in general the testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti, 
 'bearing witness with our spirits that we are children of 
 God/ He who has it knows that he has it, though he 
 who lacks it may be deceived in thinking he has it; 
 just as a man who is awake may be sure he is not 
 dreaming, whereas a man in a dream may readily fancy 
 himself awake. 
 
 There is a striking passage in the book of Numbers, 
 in which the manner of Yahwe's intercourse with Moses, 
 the incomparable prophet, is contrasted with His 
 methods of revealing His will to the ordinary prophet 
 (Num. xii. 6-8) : 
 
 If there be a prophet among you, 
 
 In the vision I make myself known to him, 
 
 In the dream I speak with him. 
 
 Not so My servant Moses: 
 
 In all My house he is found trustworthy. 
 
 Mouth to mouth I speak with him, 
 
 Plainly and not in riddles; 
 
 And the form of Yahwe he beholds. 
 
 Here we have presented, dimly but unmistakably, the 
 conception of a mode of revelation which transcends 
 the ordinary range of prophetic experience. The latter 
 sees oY ecroVr/aov Iv at^ty/u,art, and hears indistinctly; 
 God communicates with the prophet through the 
 refractory medium of visions and dreams, and con- 
 sequently his knowledge of the divine mind and 
 purpose is obscure, fragmentary, and defective. The 
 pre-eminence of Moses is expressed by figures to which 
 we cannot, indeed, attach a precise or certain significa- 
 tion, but which convey the general impression of a 
 spiritual state in which the will of God is apprehended
 
 x] PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 197 
 
 directly and consciously, and with clear insight into its 
 scope and reasons. The position of Moses in the 
 theocracy is compared to that of the confidential servant 
 in the household, whom his Lord has found trustworthy, 
 who shares his master's thought, is initiated into the 
 principles of his administration, and stands on terms of 
 personal intimacy with him. To Moses Yahwe reveals 
 Himself as He is; He communes with him in articulate 
 rational language, face to face, as when ' a man speaketh 
 with his friend.' Now it may be a question whether this 
 form of communion with God is conceived as the 
 highest reach of the prophetic consciousness, or as 
 something which lies beyond prophecy and ought to 
 be called by another name; and in the next chapter we 
 shall look at that question in the light of Jeremiah's 
 religious experience. It is plain, of course, that the 
 point of view of the writer in Numbers is not exactly 
 that of Jeremiah. Jeremiah does not admit that Yahwe 
 has anything at all to do with the visions, real or pre- 
 tended, of the false prophets : they are the product of 
 their own thought and imagination. Nevertheless it 
 seems to me that the conception of Moses' relation to 
 Yahwe contained in that passage does correspond some- 
 what with Jeremiah's consciousness of his own inter- 
 course with God, and is perhaps the nearest expression 
 of it in language which he himself would have under- 
 stood. It is impossible to suppose that any earlier Old 
 Testament writer had a higher idea of inspiration than 
 he had; and we may reasonably hold that in that 
 face-to-face converse with Yahwe, that comprehensive 
 insight into His purpose, which are there attributed to 
 Moses, we have a typical representation of what 
 Jeremiah regarded as the essence of true prophecy. The 
 basis of all genuine inspiration is a mind 'in tune with 
 the Infinite,' a moral sympathy with the principles on 
 which the universe is governed, and a consciousness,
 
 198 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION [CH. 
 
 none the less real because incommunicable, of personal 
 fellowship with the God who reigns over all, and who 
 reveals His secret purpose to His servants the prophets. 
 Amid the confusions of the spurious prophetic 
 manifestations of his time Jeremiah finds a refuge in 
 the thought of the unescapable omniscience and omni- 
 presence of God. This idea is expressed in a sentence 
 which Cornill has justly described as one of the most 
 enigmatic and surprising in the whole prophetic 
 literature (xxiii. 23 f.): 
 
 2 3 Am I a God of the Near, 
 
 And not a God of the Far? 
 
 2 4 Can any hide himself in secret places 
 
 Where I shall not see him? 
 The heavens and the earth 
 Do I not fill them? 
 Is Yahwe's oracle. 
 
 It is difficult to perceive the precise bearing of these 
 words on the problem of prophetic inspiration as dealt 
 with in the context. What, in such a connexion, is 
 meant by asserting that God is far off and not near ? 
 And how is this statement related to the further state- 
 ment that none can hide himself from the all-seeing 
 eye of Yahwe? An interesting and highly original 
 interpretation put forward by Cornill answers these 
 questions somewhat as follows. The two verses express 
 a contrast: v. 23 refers to the mistaken notion of God 
 which the false prophets entertain, v. 24 to the experi- 
 ence of a true prophet. Yahwe is not a next-door 
 neighbour, at the beck and call of every one who chooses 
 to assume familiarity with Him: He is the high and 
 lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, inaccessible to the 
 impertinent intrusion of human audacity and presump- 
 tion. But just as little as God can be found by the 
 irreverent and irreligious mind, so little can the man
 
 x] PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 199 
 
 truly called by Him to be a prophet find a retreat in 
 which the imperious summons will not reach him a 
 truth which Jeremiah had learned for himself by his 
 own experience. The exegesis is too subtle to be con- 
 vincing; although the ideas are profoundly true and in 
 every way worthy of Jeremiah. On the other hand the 
 ordinary interpretation that Yahwe is not a near- 
 sighted being, who only sees what is before his eyes, 
 but One who from a remote height surveys all and 
 penetrates every secret place where the false heart seeks 
 to hide itself is a little flat and trivial and unsatisfying. 
 Perhaps the best commentary on the passage is the 
 1 3 9th Psalm. 'O Lord, thou hast searched me and 
 known me; Thou knowest my downsitting and mine 
 uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off. 
 Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, And 
 art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word 
 in my tongue, But lo, O Lord, thou knowest it alto- 
 gether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, And 
 laid thine hand upon me: A knowledge too wonderful 
 for me; So high, I cannot attain to it! Whither shall I 
 go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy 
 presence? If I ascend up into heaven thou art there: 
 If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. If 
 I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the 
 uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand 
 lead me, And thy right hand hold me.' To the prophet 
 as to the Psalmist omnipresence and omniscience are 
 one thing. Jeremiah is not here denying the nearness 
 of God; he is merely asserting that He is also far: that 
 He is both immanent and transcendent, filling heaven 
 and earth as a living conscious mind, setting every 
 event and every secret thought in the light of His 
 countenance. And the application of this truth to the 
 facts of prophecy may be that real prophecy has, as we 
 might say, a cosmic significance. It is not a series of
 
 200 PROPHETIC INSPIRATION [CH. x 
 
 casual, spasmodic, abnormal illuminations, having no 
 relation to ultimate reality, but a reflexion in human 
 thought of the infinite Wisdom which reigns throughout 
 the universe and through all the ages: a revelation of 
 one overruling purpose by which 'the whole round 
 world is every way bound with gold chains about the 
 feet of God.' To Jeremiah the word of Yahwe is the 
 eternal truth of things, the immutable truth which will 
 shatter the existing order, and destroy the whole world 
 of lies on which men were building their confidence. 
 As the spokesman of this imperishable word he looks 
 with scornful amazement on the pretensions of the 
 false prophets who bring the rushlights of their puny 
 fabricated oracles into the bright sunshine of his own 
 sure knowledge of God and of the destiny in store for 
 his nation (xxiii. 28 f.): 
 
 28 The prophet that has a dream, 
 
 Let him relate a dream; 
 And he that has My word, 
 
 Let him declare My word in truth. 
 What has the chaff to do with the wheat? 
 
 Is Yahwe's oracle. 
 
 2 9 Is not My word like fire, 
 
 Like a hammer that shatters the rock?
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION THE INNER 
 LIFE OF JEREMIAH 
 
 A MONG the extant writings of Jeremiah there is a 
 ./^striking series of poetic utterances which, through 
 a tacit agreement of recent scholars, have come to be 
 known as the 'Confessions of Jeremiah.' The passages 
 are interspersed here and there in the middle part of 
 the book, from the end of ch. xi to ch. xx, in an 
 order imposed not by the prophet himself but by the 
 editors of his literary remains r . Although few in number 
 they have a peculiar interest, both from a biographical 
 and from a religious point of view. They supply material 
 for a chapter on the inner life of Jeremiah, such as could 
 be written in the memoir of no other prophet. They 
 form no part of his public message to his contemporaries, 
 and were probably never published in his lifetime; but, 
 as Wellhausen has finely observed 3 , it would seem that 
 some consciousness of the permanent value of his 
 meditations moved the prophet to commit them to 
 writing, for the guidance and edification of future 
 generations of seekers after God. And we cannot be 
 too grateful for their preservation. It is not too much 
 to say that if these precious fragments had perished, 
 not only would the most vital element in Jeremiah's 
 individuality and influence have remained unknown, 
 but the devotion of the Jewish Church would have been 
 immeasurably poorer in that strain of personal piety 
 
 1 Chs. xi. 18-23, xii. 1-6, xv. 10-21, xvii. 9 f., 14-18, xviii. 18-23, 
 xx. 7-12 (xx. 14-18). 
 
 2 Israelitische undjiidische Geschichte (5th Ed.), p. 149.
 
 202 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 which saved its religion from degenerating into a soul- 
 less legalism. 
 
 The characteristic of the Confessions is that in the 
 form, sometimes of monologue, but more frequently 
 of strangely ingenuous and arresting colloquy with 
 God, they lay bare the inmost secrets of the prophet's 
 life, his fightings without and fears within, his mental 
 conflict with adversity and doubt and temptation, and 
 the reaction of his whole nature on a world that 
 threatened to crush him and a task whose difficulty 
 overwhelmed him. There is nothing quite like them in 
 the range of devotional literature. Communings of the 
 soul with God as tender and intimate, meditations as 
 profound, prayers as fervent and sincere, may be found 
 in the Psalms and the great classics of the spiritual life; 
 but Jeremiah's experience is unique in this respect, that 
 it springs out of a prior official relation to God which he 
 had in virtue of his prophetic vocation. It is true that 
 the call to be a prophet was itself a religious experience, 
 involving direct and continuous intercourse of the 
 prophet with God; but from the nature of prophecy 
 this intercourse was limited to Yahwe's dealings with 
 the nation of Israel, and left unsolved, or even intensi- 
 fied, the problem of personal religion as it presented 
 itself in the prophet's own life. No man felt this more 
 acutely than Jeremiah. There were times when he could 
 rejoice in the knowledge that the Lord had spoken to 
 him and called him to a service which was perfect 
 freedom. At other times he felt his work a burden too 
 heavy to be borne; his exclusion from the common 
 joys and satisfactions of human existence filled him 
 with a wistful regret, and he would fain have been 
 released from the constraint of the divine word. At 
 such moments there burst from him those cries de pro- 
 fundis which are the ground note of the Confessions. 
 In his distress he spreads his complaint before God,
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 203 
 
 praying for the vindication of his message and the 
 victory of his cause, and seeking a sure foundation for 
 his life in the eternal purpose. Such in outline is the 
 trend of Jeremiah's experience as unfolded in the 
 passages before us. We shall find here a certain expan- 
 sion or sublimation of the prophetic consciousness into 
 the larger relationship which is properly called religion 
 a relation of which one term is God, and the other is 
 the human soul, in its desolation and weakness and 
 need, and its irrepressible craving for assurance of its 
 worth to the God who made it. That transformation, 
 for all we can tell, may have taken place more than once 
 in the history of prophecy, but the solitary record of it 
 is the Confessions of Jeremiah, which we will now 
 proceed to consider. 
 
 I 
 
 As a guide to the following exposition I give here a 
 translation of the entire series of confessional utterances, 
 with the exception of the first two (xi. 18 ff. and xii. 
 i ff.) which will be found on pages nof. Although 
 it contains some disputable renderings, and disguises 
 numerous difficulties of text and interpretation which 
 baffle the translator, it will I hope convey to the reader 
 some adequate idea of the range of thought, emotion 
 and experience which he is invited to explore in the rest 
 of this chapter. 
 
 A General Complaint and Prayer (xv. 10-18) 
 
 10 Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me 
 
 A man at strife with all the world ! 
 Nor borrower nor lender am I ; 
 And all men curse me! 
 
 11 Say, Lord, if I have not persisted 
 
 With Thee for the enemy's good 1 : 
 
 1 In this insoluble crux interpretum I have partly adopted a suggestion 
 of Prof. C. R. Brown, reading pQiB 1 ? ^K W1P tih DK
 
 204 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 And pleaded with Thee in the evil day, 
 In the day of distress ! 
 ******* 
 I SThou knowest it, Yahwe! 
 
 Remember, and visit me graciously. 
 Avenge Thyself on my persecutors, 
 
 And not in Thy long-suffering! 
 Know that for Thee I have borne reproach 
 16 From all who despise Thy word 1 . 
 
 But to me is Thy word a delight, 
 
 The joy of my heart; 
 For Thy name has been named upon me, 
 
 O Yahwe of hosts. 
 
 z 7With the merry crew I sat not rejoicing; 
 
 Lonely I sat because of Thy hand : 
 
 For with spleen Thou hast filled me. 
 18 Why is my grief perpetual ? 
 
 My wound mortal, 
 
 That will not be healed? 
 Wilt Thou be to me like a winter brook, 
 
 As waters that fail? 
 
 The Divine Answer (xv. 19-21) 
 X 9 Therefore thus saith Yahwe: 
 
 If thou return, I will restore thee; 
 
 Thou shalt stand before Me: 
 If pure thoughts thou utter, unmixed with base, 
 
 Thou shalt be as My mouth. 
 These men shall come round to thee, 
 
 But not thou to them, 
 i^n/fct . CTH'HB/' , with suff. of indirect object, would probably be 
 
 too bold.) The general sense is fortunately clear from the following line; 
 and pn^> the verb used of Jacob's wrestling at Peniel (Gen. xxxii. 29 [2 8] ; 
 Hos. xii. 4, 5 [3, 4]), suits the context admirably. The last three words are 
 from the LXX, only transposed from the second distich to the first. ^.12 
 is untranslatable; and vv. 1 3, 14 are alien to the connexion (cf. xvii. 3, 4). 
 
 ' Reading, with the consonants of the LXX: D^
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 205 
 
 20 1 will make thee to this people 
 
 A wall strong as brass: 
 They will fight, but shall not o'ercome thee; 
 
 For I am with thee to save thee, 
 To deliver thee 2I from the hand of the wicked 1 , 
 
 From the grip of the terrible. 
 
 Yahwe the Searcher of Hearts (xvii. 9, 10) 
 9 Deep 2 beyond sounding is the heart. 
 And sick beyond cure: 
 Who can know it? 
 
 10 1, Yahwe, search the heart, 
 
 And try the reins; 
 To give to a man as his ways, 
 The fruit of his doings. 
 
 A Prayer for Healing and Succour (xvii. 14-18) 
 MHeal me, Yahwe, that I may be healed; 
 Save me that I may be saved; 
 For Thou art my praise! 
 
 *5Lo! They are saying to me, 
 
 'Where, then, is Yahwe's word? 
 Let it but come!' 
 
 16 But I have not pressed for the evil days, 
 Nor desired the day of woe: 
 Thou knowest. 
 
 What has come forth from my lips 
 Lies plain before Thee. 
 
 *7 Be not a terror to me, 
 
 Thou, my trust in the evil day ! 
 
 1 Some superfluous clauses omitted in 2O<, 21. 
 
 2 Reading pi&X? with the LXX, instead of ^ptf (cf. Ps. kiv. 7 [6]). 
 
 The Heb. text, however, may be right. 
 
 3 HIT! D' TON'K^, instead of H^'lb 'K S, omitting the follow- 
 
 T T " * 
 
 ing ^*inX- For other renderings, see the comm.
 
 206 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 18 May my foes be put to shame, and not I: 
 
 May they be dismayed, and not I ! 
 Bring on them the day of evil; 
 
 Destroy them with double destruction. 
 
 A Conspiracy against the Prophet's Life (xviii. 18-23) 
 
 18 'Come,' they have said, 'Let us hatch 
 
 Against him a plot! 
 (For never shall Torah fail the priest, 
 
 Nor counsel the sage, nor word the prophet !) 
 Come, with the tongue we will smite him, 
 
 And carefully watch his words r .' 
 
 '9 Watch Thou them, O Yahwe! 
 
 And hear what my enemies say. 
 20 Should evil be rendered for good * ? 
 Think how I stood before Thee 
 To speak for their good, 
 
 To turn Thy wrath from them. 
 226 While they digged a pit to entrap me, 
 And snares did lay for my feet. 
 
 2 3 But Thou, O Yahwe, well knowest 
 
 All their designs for my death. 
 Let not their guilt be atoned for, 
 
 Nor their sin blotted out from Thy sight. 
 May they stumble and fall before Thee ! 
 
 In the time of Thy wrath deal with them. 
 
 1 The Heb. 'and not heed all his words,' in the mouth of Jere- 
 miah's enemies, has no meaning. Omit 'not' with LXX, and take the 
 verb in a bad sense = 'watch for something to be used against him' 
 (Cornill). In v. 19 I follow Schmidt in reading 'to them' for 'to me.' 
 
 z In v. 20 the clause 'they have digged a pit for my soul' is obviously 
 a variant from v. 226. This suggests, as Erbt points out, that 22 b 
 followed close on v. 20, and that consequently vv. 21, 22 a, which 
 break the connexion, are an addition to the original oracle. Duhm and 
 Cornill would reject the whole of 21-23 as unworthy of Jeremiah; but 
 see pp. 211, 223 f. below.
 
 xij THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 207 
 
 The Word of the Lord a Reproach and a Burden (xx. 7-1 2) 
 
 7 Thou hast deceived me, Yah we; and I was deceived: 
 
 Wast stronger than I, and prevailedst. 
 I am a laughingstock all the day; 
 All men deride me. 
 
 8 Whene'er I speak I am mocked 1 ; 
 
 Of violence and wrong is my cry; 
 For Yahwe's word is to me a reproach 
 And derision all day long. 
 
 9 If I said, * I will seek to forget Him, 
 
 And speak no more in His name,' 
 'Twas like glowing fire in my breast, 
 
 Shut up in my bones. 
 I was weary with keeping it under; 
 
 I could not hold out. 
 
 10 1 hear the whisper of many 2 : 
 
 * Denounce! Ay, we'll denounce him! 
 
 All you who are friends of his bosom, 
 Watch him askance. 
 
 He may haply be fooled, and give us the power 
 To wreak our revenge.' 
 
 11 But Yah we is on my side, 
 
 A Hero of might. 
 Therefore my foes shall stumble, 
 
 And shall not prevail. 
 Shamed shall they be that they acted amiss, 
 
 With eternal, never-forgotten disgrace. 
 
 ' Reading with LXX pPlB>N for ptfTN. 
 
 I T v | T : f 
 
 2 y^&ti ^llJD is omitted as a gloss from xx. 3, yielding a wrong 
 sense in this context. The rest of the verse is difficult, and the rendering 
 given precarious. I read with LXX fy ^TO? ifife# for the
 
 208 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 12 But, Yahwe of hosts, Thou righteous Searcher! 
 
 Who seest the reins and the heart: 
 
 Let me see Thy vengeance upon them; 
 
 For on Thee I roll my complaint. 
 
 'Jeremiah curses his Birth (xx. 14-18) 
 Curs'd be the day I was born, 
 
 The day when my mother bore me 
 
 Be it unblessed ! 
 
 Curs'd be the man who brought to my father 
 The good news: 'A man-child is born' 
 Making him glad! 
 
 May that day 1 be like the cities 
 That God overthrew, 
 
 And pitied them not! 
 May its morning hear the cry of distress, 
 
 Its noon the shout of battle! 
 Because it slew me not in the womb, 
 That my mother had been my grave, 
 And her womb pregnant for ever. 
 
 Why came I forth from the womb 
 To see trouble and sorrow, 
 
 To consume my days in shame? 
 
 II 
 
 The first question that arises with regard to these 
 passages is whether they form a connected series, re- 
 cording the stages of a definite, though more or less 
 protracted, spiritual crisis in Jeremiah's life, or whether 
 they reflect passing moods to which he was subject at 
 all periods of his career. And if the former view be 
 adopted we have further to inquire to what part of 
 his life this crisis belongs. I have already mentioned 
 the probability that the first two passages (in chs. xi 
 and xii) were written at the time of his flight from 
 
 1 The text reads 'that man.'
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 209 
 
 Anathoth in the fifth or sixth year of his ministry (see 
 pp. iO9ff.). But the later ones presuppose a longer ex- 
 perience of opposition and failure than Jeremiah could 
 look back upon at that time. The usual opinion of 
 scholars is that these date mostly from the last years of 
 his activity, so that the inward conflict which they 
 record was carried on amidst the external trials and 
 dangers of which we have a full report in the narrative 
 of Baruch. It is pretty generally surmised, for instance, 
 that the passages in ch. xx have a biographical con- 
 nexion with the night spent in the stocks described 
 in the immediately preceding verses. There is little 
 evidence for or against this presumption. On the whole 
 I incline to the view that the entire series falls within 
 the middle period of his work, before he had become a 
 prominent actor on the stage of politics. The kind of 
 persecution alluded to in chs. xviii and xx, with its 
 crafty and furtive devices to entangle him in his talk, 
 and find a ground of accusation against him, is not 
 exactly what we should expect when he was at open war 
 with the hierarchy and the court; it even suggests that 
 his audience was confined to a narrow circle of friends 
 and adherents, so that it was difficult for his enemies 
 to ascertain the precise tenor of his teaching. And it is 
 not at all improbable that this was really the character 
 of Jeremiah's ministry during the last twelve years of 
 Josiah. It seems to me that we can understand Jeremiah 
 better if we think of the spiritual agony of the ' Con- 
 fessions ' as the Gethsemane, rather than the Calvary, 
 of his life. When we behold the calm courage and self- 
 possession with which he faces death and outrage and 
 imprisonment under Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, we get 
 the impression of a man whose inward struggles are 
 over, who has emerged with the victory over himself, 
 and braced for his closing part. And the marvellous 
 lucidity and composure of his outlook on the future 
 
 S.P.R. 14
 
 2io INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 destiny of God's kingdom seems based on the know- 
 ledge of his own indissoluble relation to God, and the 
 clear insight into the essentially religious constitution 
 of human nature, which he gained largely through the 
 experience which is enshrined in his 'Confessions.' I 
 think we are entitled at least to proceed on the assump- 
 tion that there is a psychological continuity in the 
 passages we are about to consider that they exhibit in 
 its different aspects one great spiritual conflict which is 
 the key to Jeremiah's inner life. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The central interest of the 'Confessions' is the 
 struggle in Jeremiah's mind between fidelity to his 
 prophetic commission and the natural feelings and 
 impulses of his heart. This resolves itself into several 
 elements, which may be partly isolated and looked at 
 separately. 
 
 The first and most obvious feature is the extra- 
 ordinary effect on the mind of the prophet of persecution 
 and obloquy. He had been prepared for opposition by 
 his call to office, and had received the promise of 
 strength to endure it (i. 8, 17 ff.); but in the strange 
 and unexpected forms in which it was actually en- 
 countered by him, it almost unmanned him. He had 
 all the oriental's shrinking from ridicule, and sensitive- 
 ness to calumny; and both were his portion in full 
 measure. He is a laughing-stock all day long, an object 
 of derision to all; as often as he speaks he is mocked 
 (xx. 7, 8); his enemies assail him with the tongue (xviii. 
 1 8); every one curses him (xv. 10). His sympathetic 
 nature was wounded by the hatred and contempt to 
 which he was exposed, by the alienation of his fellows 
 and their misconstruction of his motives. He felt 
 keenly his isolation from the joys and common interests 
 of social life : ' I have not sat in the assembly of merry-
 
 xij THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 211 
 
 makers, rejoicing; because of thy hand I sat solitary* 
 (xv. 17; cf. xvi. i ff.). But besides all this he knew that 
 he had enemies who cherished designs on his life. It is 
 from the first of the Confessions that we learn of the 
 plot to assassinate him in Anathoth (xi. 1 8 ff.) and the 
 allusions of xviii. 18, 22, xx. 10 show that in Jerusalem 
 more subtle methods were employed to compass his 
 destruction. The knowledge of this produced in him a 
 feeling of resentment, which breaks out in imprecations 
 on his foes, startling in their concentrated force of 
 passion (see xi. 20, 22 f., xii. 3, xv. 15, xvii. 18, xviii. 
 23, xx. 1 1). There is a tendency among commentators 
 to clear Jeremiah of responsibility for such utterances 
 and assign their composition to later scribes who knew 
 not what spirit he was of. But they are too constant a 
 feature of the Confessions to be got rid of by the 
 hypothesis of interpolation, either on the subjective 
 ground that they are unworthy of Jeremiah, or because 
 they violate some doubtful metrical canon. That they 
 have been amplified here and there by later hands is 
 easily conceivable, and where there are signs of dis- 
 location of text (as in xviii. 20 ff.) we may reasonably 
 surmise that this has taken place; still, enough remains 
 to show that the prayer for vengeance was a real element 
 in Jeremiah's attitude towards his personal foes. The 
 business of the expositor is to understand and explain 
 the fact, not to deny its possibility (see pp. 223 f. below). 
 Jeremiah's distress, however, had a deeper cause in 
 the failure and rejection of his prophetic message. f Behold 
 they say to me, Where is the word of Yahwe ? Let it 
 come!' (xvii. 15). And this has two sides. On the one 
 hand it is a comfort and delight to him that ' for Yahwe's 
 sake he suffers reproach' (xv. 15); that it is the word of 
 the Lord which is to him ' a reproach and a derision all 
 day long' (xx. 8). There were times when his fellowship 
 with God was a source of deep spiritual joy (xv. 16), 
 
 142
 
 212 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 when he was content to sit solitary because of His hand 
 (xv. 17), sustained by the consciousness that Yahwe 
 had spoken to him, and that 'His name was named 
 upon him' (xv. 16). But at other times, the seeming 
 futility of his work, the absence of any confirmation of 
 his word, filled him with despondency and exposed 
 him to temptation. Why was he left so long to be 
 mocked at as a discredited prophet of evil? Why 
 should Yahwe be to him as a deceitful brook, as waters 
 that fail ? (xv. 1 8). He even dallied with the thought of 
 casting off the burden of prophetic responsibility, and 
 living the common natural life of men. But that was 
 only to aggravate his suffering. The word of the Lord 
 which had been an outward reproach now became an 
 inward torture : ' If I say, I will not think of Him nor 
 speak any more in His name, it is in my heart as a 
 burning fire shut up in my bones' (xx. 9). Yahwe has 
 brought him into a strait from which he can find 
 neither exit nor retreat. 'Thou hast deceived me, O 
 Yahwe,' he cries, 'and I have been deceived; Thou 
 hast been too strong for me and hast prevailed' (xx. 7). 
 Reading between the lines of the Confessions, we 
 can trace, in the next place, a process of self-examination 
 on the part of the prophet a scrutiny of his motives 
 lest he has been in any way unworthy of his calling. 
 It is instructive to observe the point to which his 
 introspection is directed. We note the vehemence with 
 which he repels the insinuation that he has had a secret 
 delight in anticipating the doom which he announced 
 as Yahwe's inevitable sentence. He repeatedly calls 
 God to witness that he has not gone beyond the message 
 he was entrusted with: that he 'has not been urgent 
 for evil, nor desired the day of woe' (xvii. 16): that on 
 the contrary he has striven to act as a mediator with 
 Yahwe on behalf of the people, and of those very men 
 who were his sworn foes (xviii. 20, xv. n). Yet the
 
 xij THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 213 
 
 very earnestness of his protestation suggests that he 
 was conscious of a moral danger at this point, into 
 which he had possibly fallen. 'The heart,' he says, 'is 
 more inscrutable than anything, and mortally sick: 
 who can know it?' (xvii. 9). Had he perhaps crossed the 
 invisible line between a holy zeal for the manifestation 
 of the divine righteousness and a selfish desire for his 
 own vindication? or between an awed submission to 
 Yahwe's purpose of judgment and a gloomy satisfaction 
 in being its instrument and herald? He has so far 
 within him the answer, of a good conscience that he 
 can bring the obscure workings of his mind into the 
 light of God's omniscience, that he may know if there 
 be any wicked way in him. ' I, Yahwe, search the heart, 
 and try the reins, to give to each man according to his 
 ways, according to the fruit of his doings' (xvii. 10; 
 cf. xi. 20, xii. 3, xx. 12). But whether in that holy 
 presence he feels himself entirely clear in this matter is 
 a question which he does not answer, or answers only 
 indirectly in the divine admonition which recalls him 
 to a sense of his responsibility (xv. 19 ff.; see below). 
 
 Lastly, these poems reveal to us Jeremiah's experi- 
 ence of -prayer. They are the outpouring of his heart to 
 One who seeth in secret and can reward openly. And 
 there is no doubt that the open reward is the object of 
 the prophet's most intense desire. He prays for healing 
 (xvii. 14) which may mean either spiritual healing of 
 his sick heart 1 (xvii. 9), or removal of the troubles 
 which oppressed him and perhaps had undermined his 
 physical health he prays for help against his adver- 
 saries (xvii. 1 8), for vindication of the cause he repre- 
 sents, and also (as we have seen) for vengeance on his 
 persecutors. But to Jeremiah prayer is more than 
 petition. It is intimate converse with God, in which his 
 whole inner life is laid bare, with its perplexities and 
 1 So Duhm, Cornill, etc., connecting directly with v . 9.
 
 214 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 struggles and temptations; and he unburdens himself 
 of the distress which weighs down his spirit, in the 
 sure confidence that he is heard and understood by the 
 God to whom all things are naked and open. Now such 
 prayer contains in itself the assurance of its answer; and 
 in one striking passage, which we must regard as the 
 climax of the 'Confessions,' Jeremiah comes to clear 
 consciousness of the answer which solves the problem 
 of his personal relation to God. 'Thus saith Yahwe, " If 
 thou return, and I restore thee, thou shalt stand before 
 Me; and if thou bring forth what is precious, unmixed 
 with what is base, then thou shalt be as My mouth. 
 These (enemies of thine) shall come round to thee, and 
 not thou to them. And I will make thee to this people 
 as an impregnable wall of brass... for I am with thee 
 to help thee and to deliver thee..." ' (xv. 19 ff.). 
 
 We can scarcely be wrong in thinking that this 
 illumination, which comes to Jeremiah in answer to 
 prayer, marks a turning-point in his life. It seems to 
 point to a certain obscuration of his prophetic con- 
 sciousness, as if the impulse of his youthful consecration 
 had been exhausted by the continued strain and labour 
 of his work. He appears to realise that he had come 
 near to forfeiting his office by losing its spirit, and that 
 he needed a renewal of his vocation, a reinstatement in 
 his mission, if he was to continue to act as a prophet of 
 Yahwe. He learns, further, that the condition of victory 
 over the world is victory over himself. He who had 
 sat as a gold-refiner, testing the lives of the men around 
 him and finding them to be refuse silver (vi. 27 ff.), 
 now discovers that all is not pure gold within himself. 
 He sees that he must separate between the noble and 
 the base in his own mind. In the presence of God he 
 recognises that there is something unworthy and ignoble 
 in those human feelings to which he has given such 
 free and fearless expression his querulous complaints
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 215 
 
 against providence, his impatience for the verification 
 of his predictions, and especially his vindictive spirit 
 towards his enemies. Thoughts like those he has uttered 
 mar his communion with the pure and holy Being 
 whose name has been named upon him, and unfit him 
 for His service. Only as he cleanses himself from these 
 lower impulses of his nature, and brings forth things 
 noble and right, can he stand before Yahwe and speak 
 as His mouthpiece to his fellow men. Only so can he 
 recover the joyous sense of God's favour which he 'had 
 loved long since, and lost awhile,' or be clothed with 
 the strength that overcomes the world. He is made to 
 feel that the word of God is sharper than any two-edged 
 sword, and pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and 
 spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of 
 the heart. He gains a glimpse of the truth that the pure 
 in heart alone can see God, and that only through what 
 is Godlike in man are God's mind and purpose dis- 
 cerned. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the experience which I have thus attempted to 
 analyse there is involved, as I have already remarked, a 
 modification of the prophetic consciousness which gives 
 to Jeremiah his peculiar importance in the history of 
 the religion of Israel. It is necessary to devote a few 
 paragraphs to the elucidation of this point; and in order 
 to do so, it is worth while to glance briefly at the 
 previous development of Hebrew prophecy along two 
 lines: first as a theocratic institution, and next as a 
 mode of divine revelation. 
 
 (a) When we speak of prophecy as a theocratic 
 institution we mean that the prophet had a recognised 
 position and function in the unwritten religious con- 
 stitution of the Hebrew state. He was the medium of 
 communication between Yahwe, the divine King of 
 Israel, and His people. Prophecy was the power which
 
 216 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 in the hands of Samuel had welded the nation into a 
 political unity by the establishment of the monarchy; 
 and throughout its history it had never abdicated its 
 mission to criticise the acts and policy of the secular 
 rulers of the state. It claimed this right not, as is some- 
 times imagined, as the organ of democratic opinion, 
 but (in idea at least) as the representative of Yahwe's 
 prerogative, the organ through which He exercised 
 His regal authority over Israel. Its place in the national 
 life was, therefore, as constitutional as the kingship, of 
 which in a sense it had been the creator. Both were 
 religious institutions: the king was Yahwe's executive 
 agent or vicegerent; the prophet was His mouthpiece; 
 and in the inevitable conflicts which arose between the 
 secular interests of the monarchy and the ethical 
 demands of the true religion the prophet spoke with 
 a moral authority which appealed to a deeply-rooted 
 sentiment in the mind of the community. 
 
 It might indeed be objected that this function of 
 prophecy was annulled in the case of the great prophets 
 who, from Amos downwards, had announced the dis- 
 solution of the bond between Yah we and Israel; and in 
 principle that is true. These men were conscious of a 
 personal vocation and an individual mission, which 
 owed nothing to the public recognition of their office. 
 But if the theocratic conception was virtually tran- 
 scended, the consequences had not been drawn. The 
 whole ministry of Isaiah is a proof that the thought of 
 Yahwe's kingship was a living truth to his mind and 
 a sustaining motive of his activity; and it was applied 
 by him to political matters in the full conviction of 
 Yahwe's claim to a controlling voice in the ordering of 
 affairs of state. The essential fact is and this is as true 
 of Amos and Hosea and Micah as of Isaiah that the 
 prophet was still a vehicle of Yahwe's message to the 
 nation. The correlate of the prophet, if I may so express
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 217 
 
 it, the recipient of his revelation is Israel as a cor- 
 porate entity; the response to the divine word, the only 
 response that matters, has to be given by the nation as 
 a whole; what the prophet himself feels about it is a 
 question strictly irrelevant to his mission. He stands 
 wholly on the side of God as the medium through whom 
 He has chosen to reveal His mind to His people. He 
 is of course a self-conscious medium; his reason, his 
 conscience, his perceptions of spiritual and religious 
 truth, are all actively employed in the discharge of his 
 duty. But there is no internal schism, no reaction of 
 any part of his being against the word of the Lord; or 
 if there be a conflict (as in the case of Hosea), it is 
 transferred from the human mind to the divine, and 
 becomes part of the one indivisible message which the 
 prophet has to utter. Such is the conception we are led 
 to form from the recorded experience of these prophets; 
 and even if they had their moments of hesitancy and 
 inward revolt, still the fact that they do not disclose 
 them shows that they did not regard them as having 
 positive religious value either for themselves or for others. 
 Now the public ministry of Jeremiah was entirely 
 modelled on this theocratic idea of the function of the 
 prophet in the state, and differed in no material respect 
 from that of his predecessors. Like them he stood over 
 against the people as the organ of Yahwe's revelation, 
 appealing to the national conscience, and labouring to 
 bring about a national conversion. He knew that he 
 preached to deaf ears, and that his labour would be in 
 vain that Judah would not, and (as he ever more 
 clearly saw) could not, repent; and that therefore the 
 word of Yahwe must be verified in its destruction 1 . 
 
 1 There seems to be nothing to support the theory of Erbt, that he ever 
 turned aside from this main task, hopeless though it was, to work for the 
 conversion of individuals, or even (like Isaiah) to form a new spiritual 
 fellowship composed of men in whom his word found a believing response.
 
 2i8 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 In all this Jeremiah is 'as one of the prophets.' But it 
 is evident that the theocratic conception of the prophetic 
 office could not survive the downfall of the Jewish 
 state, which alone had supplied the requisite conditions 
 for the normal exercise of the prophet's calling. We 
 cannot doubt that the presentiment of that impending- 
 catastrophe overshadowed Jeremiah's mind, and im- 
 pelled him to seek a deeper foundation for his prophetic 
 relation to God than in the things that were shaken and 
 ready to pass away. And in his Confessions we see 
 something of the inward process through which a larger 
 vision came to him. 
 
 We see that the controversy between Yahwe and 
 Israel was reflected in his own consciousness, in a heart- 
 rending conflict between his natural love for his nation 
 and his sense of what Yahwe's righteousness demanded. 
 As a true and loyal Israelite, he was slow to abandon 
 the hope that the alienation might be removed; and in 
 this hope he had sought to bridge the gulf between 
 Israel and its God by his personal intercession. Once 
 and again the impulse to intercessory prayer had welled 
 up from the depth of his affection for his brethren 
 (xviii. 20, xv. 1 1), but only to be checked by the stern 
 mandate of the inner voice that spoke to him through 
 his conscience. 'Pray not thou for this people, neither 
 lift up cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede 
 with Me; for I will not hear thee' (vii. 16; cf. xiv. 1 1 f., 
 xi. 14). At such moments the inexorableness of the 
 divine justice came home to him with overwhelming 
 power, and compelled him to acquiesce in the sentence 
 of rejection on the nation. At the same time we see that 
 the effect of his preaching in the prevailing temper of 
 indifference and impenitence had been to set the 
 opinion of the people strongly against him, and isolate 
 him completely from their fellowship. Thus on both 
 sides ' his efforts to heal the breach between Yahwe and
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 219 
 
 the nation had only resulted in a sharp antagonism 
 between himself and his compatriots' (Wellhausen, 
 Isr. u.jiid. Gesch. p. 149). He was forced to realise that 
 he stood alone on the side of God, the bearer of a revela- 
 tion which found no response anywhere except in his 
 own heart. With greater truth than Elijah he could have 
 said 'I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life to 
 take it away' (i Kings xix. 10, 14). It was as if the 
 believing remnant which to Isaiah had represented the 
 spiritual kernel of Israel and the hope of its future had 
 shrunk in Jeremiah's view to the limits of his own 
 individual life 1 . 
 
 In such a situation we may say that one of two things 
 must happen. Either the prophet will despair of religion, 
 the word of God on which it depends having proved to 
 be seed which can find no soil in human nature wherein 
 it could germinate, or a purely destructive force without 
 power to build and plant and renew. Or else he will 
 find in himself, in his own assent to its truth and his 
 sense of its imperishable worth, the germ and pledge 
 of a new religious relationship, and a proof that there 
 is that in the human heart which will not let the truth 
 of God perish. The second is what happened with 
 Jeremiah. Disowned by men and driven in upon him- 
 self, he found in the truth of his rejected prophecy an 
 indissoluble link of communion between his own soul 
 and God. Amid all his tribulations and the defeat of his 
 lifework, it was a blessedness of which nothing could 
 rob him that Yahwe, the God of Israel, had spoken to 
 him, and received him into His fellowship. And in this 
 individual response to the voice of God he discovered 
 an earnest of that instinctive and universal sense of the 
 divine in which he recognised the permanent essence 
 of religion (viii. 7; see pp. i2ofF. above). 
 
 1 See Wellhausen, op. '/.; ist Ed., p. 77; a passage omitted in later 
 editions.
 
 220 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 () When we look at prophecy, in the second place, 
 as a human medium of revelation, we can trace a 
 progressive emancipation of its spiritual essence from 
 the ecstatic or visionary forms in which its earlier 
 manifestations consist. At the lowest stage of prophecy 
 of which we need here to take any account, inspiration 
 and ecstasy are identified. Revelation was an occasional 
 thing; the prophet or seer was a man endowed with a 
 peculiar psychopathic susceptibility to divine suggestion 
 or influence, who delivered his oracles piecemeal as 
 they came to him. His message consists either of words 
 uttered unconsciously in a state of trance, or of an 
 announcement of what he has seen and heard in vision; 
 his conscious mental powers playing no essential part 
 in the process. We have an example of this type of 
 prophecy in the Old Testament in the heathen sooth- 
 sayer Balaam ' the man whose eye is closed, who seeth 
 the vision of the Almighty, fallen down and having his 
 eyes uncovered' (Num. xxiv. 3, 4, 15, 16) and perhaps 
 another in Micaiah ben-Imlah in the time of Elijah and 
 Ahab (i Kings xxii. 15 ff.). On the higher level repre- 
 sented by the great prophets of Israel this crude and 
 fragmentary conception of inspiration is left far behind. 
 Visions and auditions, mysterious inward promptings 
 to speech and action, are still a part of the prophet's 
 experience; but the field of revelation is no longer 
 confined to them alone. The meaning of the vision passes 
 into the prophet's thinking, and becomes the nucleus 
 of a comprehensive view of God and the world, from 
 which spring ever fresh intuitions of truth and calls to 
 duty. That these again may clothe themselves involun- 
 tarily in symbolic imagery is a fact which does not in 
 the least detract from the essentially spiritual character 
 of the prophet's discernment of the mind of God. He 
 reflects upon what he has seen and heard, and interprets 
 its significance to himself and his hearers; and the
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 221 
 
 substance of his revelation is not the mere vision or 
 audition itself but the truth which it has evoked or 
 symbolised in his mind. Thus his reasoning and moral 
 faculties are actively engaged in the discovery and 
 delivery of his message; and all that comes home to him 
 with immediate certainty as the result of his initiation 
 into the divine purpose is as truly the word of God to 
 him as the content of the vision itself. The clearest 
 illustration of this phase of prophecy is seen in Isaiah, 
 whose inaugural vision gave the first impulse to his life's 
 thought and activity, and yet was not published till 
 several years after his work began. But Amos and 
 Hosea and Micah all stand on the same high plane of 
 prophetic inspiration. 
 
 The difference between Jeremiah and these earlier 
 prophets is merely that the ecstatic and the intuitive or 
 reflective elements of his experience are more sharply 
 distinguished in his mind than appears to have been 
 the case with them, and that he relies more explicitly 
 than they on the intuition. We saw in our last chapter 1 
 that his controversy with the false prophets of his day 
 led him to deny all revelational value to the vision as a 
 mere psychological fact. He does not doubt the reality 
 of his own visions, nor does he deny that his opponents 
 have visions of a sort; but he finds the ultimate criterion 
 of inspiration in a personal knowledge of Yahwe which 
 he has and they have not. So in the Confessions he 
 apprehends the word of God in two forms : an imper- 
 sonal form, which is a survival of the ecstatic mode of 
 revelation; and a personal form, which appeals directly 
 to his conscience and reason. The former appears in the 
 internal pressure which compels him to speak in the 
 name of Yahwe, and against which he struggles in vain 
 (xx. 9); and the latter in the divine answer to his per- 
 plexities and prayers which commands the assent of his 
 
 1 PP. 194-f-
 
 222 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 moral and religious sense by its inherent self-evidencing 
 power (xv. 19 ff.). Now this second form of inspiration 
 may be said to be the vanishing-point of the prophetic 
 consciousness, where it shakes off the last remnant of 
 subconscious thought, which had served its purpose in 
 the providential education of the people of religion, and 
 gives place to what had always been the spiritual 
 essence of true prophecy the intuitive certainty of 
 divine truth, and the illumination of the whole con- 
 scious mind by the Spirit of God. 
 
 The peculiar importance of Jeremiah's position in 
 the religious history of Israel might be tersely expressed 
 by saying that he embodies the transition from the 
 prophet to the Psalmist. In the same sense in which he 
 is called the last of the prophets, he may be regarded 
 as the first of the psalmists. No doubt there were 
 psalmists before Jeremiah, as there were prophets after 
 him; but just as the one movement culminates and comes 
 to its purest expression in his person, so the other owes 
 much of what is vital and precious in its spirit to his 
 influence. Prophecy's last effort, Dr Davidson has said, 
 was to reveal itself in a life; and we can add that that 
 life, in which prophecy effloresced, contained the germ 
 of the devotional poetry of the Psalter. 
 
 The secret of the transmutation lies before us in the 
 'Confessions,' and has been partly elucidated in the 
 foregoing exposition. We have seen how the prophetic 
 vocation became to Jeremiah the centre of a new and 
 more intimately human relation to God, which ex- 
 panded into a life of prayer and communion, in which 
 all that concerned him, his temptations, his perplexities, 
 and the burden of his work, formed the subject of an 
 intimate introspective dialogue between himself and the 
 divine voice that echoed mysteriously through the
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 223 
 
 secret chambers of his soul. It was this reaction of his 
 human subjectivity on the fact of his prophetic call 
 which unsealed within him the perennial fountain of 
 true piety the religious receptivity of the individual. 
 Out of the Hebrew prophet, there is created in Jeremiah 
 a new spiritual type the Old Testament saint: the 
 man who, when flesh and heart fail, finds in God the 
 strength of his heart and his portion for ever (Ps. Ixxiii. 
 26). It remains for us to sketch briefly the outstanding 
 features of this type of piety, as exhibited in Jeremiah, 
 i. Its first and most obvious characteristic is its 
 strongly marked individualism. In the case of Jeremiah 
 this is naturally accounted for by the peculiar circum- 
 stances of his life; and it may be that only an altogether 
 exceptional experience like his could have found a path 
 from the national and prophetic religion of ancient 
 Israel to the personal religion of the later Jewish Church 
 and Christianity. At all events it is with his experience 
 that we are here concerned; and the significant fact is 
 that in writing the 'Confessions' he felt himself abso- 
 lutely cut off from religious fellowship with men. The 
 bond between him and his nation was broken, or ceased 
 to be a religious bond, from the time when he realised 
 that he stood alone for Yahwe against a people whom 
 he still loved, but for whom he might not pray. Indi- 
 vidual men are present to his thoughts only as foes, 
 persecutors, and despisers of God's word. He seemed 
 to himself the one religious person in his generation, 
 the only man who knew Yahwe and stood in immediate 
 relation to Him. In this consciousness of spiritual isola- 
 tion, it seemed further to Jeremiah that the whole 
 cause of Yahwe in the world hung on his individual 
 life upon his inward fidelity to the truth revealed to 
 him, and also on his outward vindication in the sight of 
 men. This is the explanation, even if it be not a justi- 
 fication, of his passionate desire for the discomfiture
 
 224 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 of his enemies. Either they must go under or he; either 
 they or he must be put to everlasting shame and con- 
 fusion. And forasmuch as he was persuaded that the 
 truth of God stood or fell with him, he felt assured of 
 final victory over his foes, and prayed with a good 
 conscience that he might see Yahwe's vengeance upon 
 them. If we judge this attitude of mind from the stand- 
 point of the Christian ideal, we must recognise the 
 truth of Smend's remark that 'Jeremiah was no martyr 
 in the New Testament sense 1 .' He could not himself 
 hold on to the truth if Yahwe should leave him naked 
 to his enemies' scorn. He had not learned the secret of 
 victory through defeat and death. 
 
 Such was the cradle of individual religion, as it came 
 to birth in the person of Jeremiah. Now individualism 
 is not the last word in religion, nor was it Jeremiah's 
 last word. The time came, as we shall see in a future 
 connexion, when his private relation to God, combined 
 with other elements in his thinking, broadened out into 
 the conception of a new community of the people of 
 God, based on direct personal knowledge of God such 
 as he alone at this time possessed. Nevertheless, both 
 in his experience and in the history of revelation, 
 individualism was a necessary stage towards the forma- 
 tion of the new humanity whose Head is Christ. It is 
 also perhaps a stage which is repeated in every life that 
 attains to saintly excellence. There are in every deeply 
 religious life moments when earthly relationships fall 
 away, when the life of active service is suspended, and 
 the soul is left alone with God, having nothing in 
 heaven or earth to desire besides Him. The deepening 
 of religion on its subjective side, begun in Jeremiah and 
 continued in a succession of like-minded psalmists, is 
 the best part of the legacy which Judaism has bequeathed 
 to the Christian Church. It explored and brought to 
 1 Alttestamentlicke Religionsgeschichte (2nd Ed.), p. 261.
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 225 
 
 light the capacity of the human spirit for fellowship 
 with the Divine, which was the preparation for the 
 gathering together into one through Jesus Christ of the 
 children of God who are scattered abroad (John xi. 52). 
 
 2. The basis of Jeremiah's personal religion is his 
 trust in the unerring righteousness of God. He was 
 the first to carry that great prophetic idea into the 
 sphere of the individual life. Yahwe was to him the 
 Righteous Judge, the all-seeing Searcher of hearts, who 
 gives to every man according to his deeds (xvii. 9, 
 xii. 3, xx. 12). This conception of God is a reflexion of 
 the process by which he experienced the divine working 
 within him. He was too sincere not to be conscious of 
 his fundamental integrity, but too sensitive morally not 
 to be aware of the possibilities of evil that lurked in the 
 inscrutable depths of his nature. We have seen how 
 he shudders at the discovery of the deceitfulness of his 
 heart, with what jealousy he examines into the purity 
 of his motives, how earnestly he strives to rid himself 
 of all illusion and unreality and self deception. This we 
 call the operation of conscience; but to Jeremiah it is 
 the eye of Yahwe searching the thoughts and intents 
 of the heart, and bringing to light things hidden from 
 himself. And once more the process starts from the 
 close personal relation to God imposed on him by his 
 prophetic mission. If Yahwe has called him to be a 
 prophet, He must see in him something which fits him 
 for His service and friendship; and Jeremiah recognises 
 it to be his supreme moral task to be this something, 
 to eliminate the baser elements of his character and live 
 wholly and resolutely in the good and true, that he may 
 stand approved and without offence in God's holy 
 sight. He is of those who walk in the light, and have 
 fellowship with the God who is light, and in whom is 
 no darkness at all. 
 
 Now this note of moral sincerity^ springing from a 
 
 S.P.R. I<
 
 226 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 vivid realisation of the omniscience and righteousness 
 of God, is one that is repeatedly struck in the medita- 
 tions and prayers of the Psalter. The deeply exercised 
 writer of the 5 ist Psalm knows that 'truth in the inward 
 parts' is the indispensable condition of restoration to 
 Yahwe's favour and the joy of his salvation; the writer 
 of the 1 39th revels in the thought of God's exhaustive 
 and unescapable knowledge of him, and closes his 
 meditation with the remarkable prayer, conceived in 
 the very spirit of Jeremiah : * Search me, O God, and 
 know my heart: Try me and know my thoughts: And 
 see if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead 
 me in the way everlasting ' ; and other illustrations might 
 be cited. At times such utterances may strike us as 
 deficient in evangelical humility. There is often an 
 insistent protestation of integrity which savours of self- 
 righteousness; we miss the utter abnegation of merit, 
 the emptying of self, the absolute dependence on a 
 goodness and a love outside of ourselves which regards 
 not our desert but our need, such as are expressed in 
 many favourite Christian hymns 1 . 
 
 But on the other hand the strong ethical sense of the 
 Psalmists and Jeremiah supplies a needful corrective 
 to the opposite error to which evangelical piety is itself 
 1 For example, in Christina Rossetti's: 
 
 None other Lamb, none other name, 
 
 None other hope in heaven or earth or sea. 
 
 None other hiding-place from guilt and shame 
 None beside Thee! 
 
 My faith burns low, my hope burns low; 
 Only my heart's desire cries out in me 
 By the deep thunder of its want and woe, 
 Cries out to Thee. 
 
 Lord, Thou art life, though I be dead; 
 
 Love's fire art Thou, however cold I be: 
 Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head, 
 Nor home, but Thee.
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 227 
 
 exposed. For if the too obtrusive consciousness of moral 
 sincerity as a claim on the divine mercy involves the 
 danger of spiritual pride, the absence of the thing itself 
 would be fatal to all true godliness; and there is a 
 hypocrisy of self-depreciation into which a spurious and 
 sentimental spirituality is apt to fall. In any case it was 
 a great step in the history of religion to turn from the 
 formalism of an external worship, and the legalism of 
 a national covenant, and to find God in the heart of the 
 individual, as One whose holy and searching presence 
 strengthens every good purpose and pure aspiration 
 that dwells there, and who sets secret sins in the light 
 of His countenance. By the grace of God Jeremiah took 
 that step, and opened up a way of access to God which 
 many devout souls, following in his footprints, found 
 to be the way everlasting. 
 
 3. Jeremiah is original above all in the exercise of 
 prayer. Prayer is the universal form in which com- 
 munion with God finds expression, and is rightly 
 described as the 'vital breath,' the 'native air' of indi- 
 vidual religion. How far the older prophets were men 
 of prayer is a question which we have slight means of 
 answering. The theory of Oehler, Riehm, Giesebrecht 
 and others, that the prophetic revelation always came 
 in answer to prayer, is mainly a generalisation from 
 the case of Jeremiah, which may or may not be legiti- 
 mate. We may suspect that in this respect, as in so 
 many others, Jeremiah's experience was sui generis. 
 Now it is an interesting fact in his spiritual history that 
 his first efforts in prayer were intercessory or mediatorial 
 prayers for the nation whose doom he was compelled 
 to pronounce. He had felt that such intercession was 
 unavailing. It was not in accordance with the will of 
 Yahwe as revealed to him; it was but the protest of his 
 natural feeling against the conviction that the judgment 
 was inevitable. And it was partly through the rejection 
 
 152
 
 228 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. 
 
 of his prayer for others that he learned to pray for 
 himself. He has been named by Wellhausen ' the father 
 of true prayer,' as being the first in whom the higher 
 spiritual qualities of prayer come to light. Devotional 
 writers speak of a 'ladder of prayer'; by which they 
 mean the successive stages through which the individual 
 enters into the full possession of the grace and privilege 
 of prayer. But there is a similar ladder in the historical 
 evolution of religion; and among the innumerable 
 steps in that ladder there are three which may be dis- 
 tinguished. The lowest is that of petition for the fulfil- 
 ment of some particular desire, or the removal of some 
 external evil, solely in the interest of the individual 
 himself. Such prayer is common to every known form 
 and phase of religion. The second stage is that on which 
 Jeremiah enters. Here prayer is the effort of the soul to 
 bring every thought and feeling into harmony with the 
 will of God, and to find its true good in being right with 
 Him. Although it is neither selfish nor self-centred, it 
 contains a certain residuum of self-will an unresolved 
 difference of the two wills, arising from the man's 
 inability to conceive that what he deems to be necessary 
 for his good can possibly be other than what God wills 
 that he should have: in Jeremiah's case the overthrow 
 of his enemies. There is a third stage, to which perhaps 
 he hardly attains, where the thought of self is entirely 
 lost, and the mind surrenders itself wholly to the divine 
 will as that which alone is truly good. ' Father, not my 
 will but Thine be done.' 
 
 4. And this leads me to some concluding observa- 
 tions on the limitations of Jeremiah's religious experi- 
 ence, judged of course by comparison with the Christian 
 ideal. Nearly fifty years ago, Bernhard Duhm, since 
 known as one of the most gifted interpreters of the 
 mind of Jeremiah, wrote these words : ' If it had been 
 possible for him to find the indispensable idea of the
 
 xi] THE INNER LIFE OF JEREMIAH 229 
 
 religious community, so necessary for the existence of 
 the religious individual, he would have anticipated 
 Christianity; and as his person so often reminds us of 
 Christ, so his theology would remind us of the Christian 
 conception of the kingdom of God 1 .' If this statement 
 implies, as it appears to do, that but for that one lacuna 
 in his thinking, Jeremiah could have been the founder 
 of the Christian religion, it is a rash and empty specula- 
 tion, which the distinguished author would probably 
 not defend to-day. Jesus Christ would have said that 
 though among men born of women there had not 
 arisen a greater than Jeremiah, yet he that is least in 
 the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Putting that 
 aside, however, I think that the defects of his piety are 
 mainly traceable to a single root: viz. an incomplete 
 possession by the spirit of love, which is the medium 
 of perfect communion with God. It is strange at first 
 sight that one who had such a profound conviction of 
 the love of Yahwe for Israel drew so little upon it for 
 himself. God is to him the all-seeing, all-righteous 
 Judge, rather than a loving Father. It is true that in 
 the recognition of his personal worth by Yahwe he does 
 experience the divine love in a measure; but we can 
 scarcely speak of him as one in whom the love of God 
 was perfected. He did not enter into the truth that God 
 is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, 
 and God in him. His was not the perfect love that 
 casteth out fear; for great as his faith in Yahwe is it 
 does not deliver him from fear that His cause may 
 suffer shipwreck through the triumph of his foes. 
 Again, does he not come under the sweep of the great 
 Johannine maxim that 'he that loveth not his brother 
 whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he 
 hath not seen'? His feeling towards his persecutors is 
 natural and excusable, and in a sense just, but it is not 
 1 Theol. d. Proph. p. 251.
 
 230 INDIVIDUAL RELIGION [CH. xi 
 
 the spirit of love which inspires a prayer for their 
 destruction. Jeremiah had not learned the lesson of the 
 Cross, or the mind which in the agony of death could 
 pray, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do'; 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.' A later 
 generation read something of that lesson in the long 
 drawn out tragedy of his career, but Jeremiah went 
 down to the grave, stedfast to the end in his loyalty to 
 the truth, but without the consolation of seeing that 
 the pleasure of the Lord had prospered in his hands.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 
 
 battle of Megiddo (608 B.C.), and the stirring 
 JL events which rapidly followed, mark the opening 
 of a new chapter in Jeremiah's life. What we may call 
 the Deuteronomic period, with its comparative pros- 
 perity, its political optimism, and its religious insincerity, 
 had come to an end, and soon the ship of state was 
 labouring in a heavy sea which called for more skilful 
 steersmanship than its rulers could bring to their task. 
 The crisis found Jeremiah still in the prime of life 
 probably not more than forty years of age and he 
 faced it with the serene courage and wisdom of one 
 who stood in the council of the Lord and knew His 
 purpose. While the religious and prophetic convictions 
 which underlay all his work remain unchanged, his 
 energies are directed into a new channel. Hitherto he 
 seems to have held aloof from political action, confining 
 himself to the hortatory side of his mission, while 
 maturing in secret those conceptions of the essential 
 nature of religion which were to be his guiding light in 
 the stormy years that lay before him. But from about 
 608 onwards he appears to have exercised a political 
 ministry hardly less influential than that of Isaiah in a 
 previous generation. He certainly becomes one of the 
 outstanding public figures of the time, and plays an 
 active part as an adviser in public and national affairs. 
 We must note in passing that it is about this time 
 that we begin to see Jeremiah through the eyes of a 
 sympathetic and well-informed contemporary, Baruch, 
 the son of Neraiah, to whose memorabilia we are prob-
 
 232 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 ably indebted for most of our knowledge of the prophet's 
 public appearances. It is just possible, therefore, that if 
 Baruch had become acquainted with Jeremiah sooner, 
 or if his narrative had commenced at an earlier period, 
 we might have a different impression of the prophet's 
 previous activity from that which we form from his own 
 extant oracles, detached as they mostly are from any 
 definite situation. But on the other hand it is equally 
 probable that it was the new publicity on which Jere- 
 miah had entered that drew Baruch to his side, and 
 established the close and fruitful intimacy which ob- 
 tained between the prophet and his biographer. How- 
 ever that may be, we have now to study Jeremiah as an 
 actor on the stage of politics, and to see how his funda- 
 mental principles were worked out in their application 
 to a rapidly developing political situation. 
 
 Now it is a significant feature of the ministry of 
 Jeremiah that its latest phase returns to its earliest in 
 the renewed expectation of danger from the north. He 
 had commenced as a prophet by announcing that ' Evil 
 looms from the North and great destruction ' (vi. I ; cf. 
 iv. 6). In the Scythian terror of his youth he had heard 
 the muttering of the storm that was to break on his 
 people and hurl them to destruction; and doubtless he 
 had looked for a speedy realisation of his vision of woe. 
 But the danger had passed away: the northern sky 
 cleared up, and it seemed as if assured peace had come 
 to Judah through the mercy of its God. For twenty 
 years Jeremiah had borne the reproach of a false and 
 discredited prophet. Again and again the mocking 
 taunt had assailed his ears: 'Where is the word of 
 Yahwe? Let it come, pray!' (xvii. 15). Yet he remained 
 unshaken in the confidence that his message had been 
 true, and he preserved the oracles in which it had been 
 expressed as words of Yahwe whose verification was 
 certain. And now at last the Foe from the North appears
 
 xii] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 233 
 
 again in a more formidable guise; he is not the Scythians, 
 but a new power raised up by God to be the instrument 
 of His people's overthrow. Yahwe, who had seemed 
 to be asleep, proves Himself to be 'wakeful over His 
 word to fulfil it' (ch. i. 12). And the prophet's youthful 
 foreboding, clarified by larger knowledge of the world 
 and of the forces that make history, returns upon him 
 with redoubled conviction as he sees more and more 
 clearly the unfolding of the providential purpose of 
 judgment on the impenitent people of Israel. This new 
 power is the Chaldean empire of Nebuchadnezzar. 
 Let us first trace the series of events which brought 
 this power within the prophet's horizon. 
 
 We start from the battle of Megiddo. That battle, 
 we are told by the writer of the book of Chronicles 
 (2 Chron. xxxv. 21 ff.; cf. i Esdras i. 26 ff.) was fought 
 by the Egyptian monarch against his wish, being forced 
 on him by the fatal obstinacy of Josiah. What motive 
 induced the king of Judah to provoke the unequal 
 conflict we are not told : most probably it was a resolve, 
 fortified by reliance on the Covenant with Yahwe, to 
 maintain the independence of the sacred territory which, 
 though not immediately threatened, would undoubtedly 
 have been lost in the event of an Egyptian success. 
 The real objective of Pharaoh Necho's expedition was 
 the Euphrates, where he hoped to establish himself in 
 possession of all Syria as it fell from the enfeebled grasp 
 of the Assyrian empire. And in fact the fall of Nineveh 
 in 606 found him still in command of the coveted 
 province. He was able to veto the popular election of 
 Shallum, or Jehoahaz, to the vacant throne of Judah, 
 and installed as his viceroy the eldest son of Josiah, 
 Eliakim, bestowing on him his better known name of 
 Jehoiakim. There was, however, a rival claimant to 
 the lordship of western Asia with whom Necho had 
 still to reckon. Nabopolassar, the Chaldean king of
 
 234 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 Babylon, dispatched an army under his son Nebuchad- 
 nezzar to the upper Euphrates, where the Egyptians 
 suffered a crushing defeat in the decisive battle of 
 Carchemish (605 B.C.). Necho was compelled to 
 evacuate all his Asiatic conquests, and leave Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, who had just succeeded to his father's throne, 
 undisputed master of Syria and Palestine. 'The king 
 of Egypt came no more out of his land' (2 Kings 
 xxiv. 7). 
 
 Jeremiah could not have been a passive spectator of 
 these critical events. It is certainly surprising that no 
 extant prophecy of his can be plausibly read as a warn- 
 ing against the infatuated policy which led to the disaster 
 of Megiddo 1 . We can imagine what Isaiah's action 
 would have been in such an emergency. How he would 
 have thundered out his denunciations of the recklessness 
 and short-sightedness of the militarists : how he would 
 have unmasked their secret intrigues, and used every 
 means in his power to awaken public opinion to the 
 danger of their project! Jeremiah showed himself 
 capable of equally vigorous action on a later occasion 
 (chs. xxvii, xxviii), and if he was silent at this time 
 the most probable reason is that he had not yet taken 
 up the role of political adviser which was soon to be 
 thrust upon him. 
 
 The first certain indication of his absorbing interest 
 in current political events is his lament over the fate in 
 store for the young prince Jehoahaz when he was 
 summoned before Pharaoh Necho at his headquarters 
 at Riblah (2 Kings xxiii. 33). It would seem that the 
 
 1 In i Esdras iii. 28 it is assumed that Jeremiah must have warned 
 Josiah against this step. Schmidt (pp. cit. p. 278) surmises that the 
 incident of the broken bottle in ch. xii. i-xx. 6 may have reference to 
 this ill-fated enterprise; and Erbt (p. 148) suggests a similar origin for the 
 short oracle of xiii. 12 f.; but there is little to support either of these 
 interpretations.
 
 xii] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 235 
 
 protracted obsequies of the dead king Josiah were being 
 performed z , when Jeremiah appeared before the wailing 
 multitude and recited this dirge (ch. xxii. 10): 
 Weep ye not for him that is dead, 
 
 Neither bemoan him. 
 But weep, yea weep, for him who goes away; 
 
 For he shall return no more, 
 
 Nor see his native land. 
 
 It is a mistake, however, to suppose that this plaintive 
 elegy reveals a political bias on the part of the prophet*. 
 Political faction was no doubt actively at work in regard 
 to the succession to the crown. Jehoahaz had been 
 elected by popular acclamation in opposition to the 
 heir-apparent Jehoiakim. Since Necho deposed and 
 imprisoned him and put his elder brother on the throne, 
 we may reasonably infer that Jehoiakim had made 
 interest with the Pharaoh, and became the centre of a 
 pro-Egyptian party in Jerusalem. His adherents were a 
 section of the aristocracy and the priesthood. Jehoahaz 
 may therefore have stood for the policy of his father 
 Josiah, the policy of national independence in reliance 
 on Yahwe; and his election would show that democratic 
 opinion was on that side. But Jeremiah's oracle is no 
 more an expression of sympathy with that view than of 
 antagonism to the policy of Josiah, which so far as we 
 can see must have been identical with that represented 
 by Jehoahaz. It is simply an outpouring of personal 
 emotion, inspired by the prophetic insight which 
 assured him that the unhappy prince who was to return 
 no^more had 'left behind* no 'powers that would work 
 for him,' but that fresh misfortunes and causes of mourn- 
 ing lay before the people as it stumbled blindly forward 
 toward the dark mountains. 
 
 1 It may be supposed that the reign of Jehoahaz was even shorter 
 than the arbitrary three months assigned to him in the Chronology 
 (2 Kings xxiii. 31). a Erbt, op. cit. p. 269.
 
 236 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 To this period belongs the great Temple oration of 
 chs. vii, xxvi, which we have already examined in 
 a former connexion 1 . Since its contents are not political 
 we need not dwell further on it here, except to note 
 that Jeremiah at this time found support in the higher 
 ranks of society. It is significant that Ahikam, a son of 
 one of the original promoters of Deuteronomy, was on 
 his side, in opposition to the priests and prophets, who 
 were partisans of the perverted interpretation of the 
 Code against which Jeremiah protested. But apart from 
 that, there is evidence of a marked difference of temper 
 between the priesthood and the secular nobility. The 
 priests were Jeremiah's natural and inveterate enemies, 
 and their behaviour on this occasion excites no surprise. 
 The lay aristocrats may not have been his friends; they 
 may not have been members of the prophetic party, or 
 deeply concerned for the interests of religion; but at 
 least they were a body of open-minded and unpre- 
 judiced men, who were prepared to resist the encroach- 
 ments of priestly bigotry, and maintain the right of 
 prophecy to a free voice in the forum of public opinion. 
 The fact is interesting in view of the change which 
 passed over the spirit of the governing class, first under 
 the influence of Jehoiakim's despotic rule, and later 
 through the rise to power of a lower social stratum after 
 the first deportation to Babylon. 
 
 Our next glimpse of Jewish politics is in the fourth 
 and fifth years of Jehoiakim : the time when the battle 
 of Carchemish put an end to the Egyptian suzerainty 
 in Palestine. It was either the news of this event or a 
 prophetic anticipation of it that moved Jeremiah to take 
 the most momentous step in his public career. He 
 resolved to make a last effort to reach the conscience of 
 his countrymen by a solemn recital of all the words of 
 warning which Yahwe had imparted to him since the 
 1 pp. 168-174.
 
 xii] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 237 
 
 beginning of his ministry. With the assistance of 
 Baruch, a professional writer, he prepared a roll of his 
 prophecies ready for public reading when a suitable 
 occasion should present itself. He had to wait several 
 months 1 ; but at last, in December of the year 604, the 
 proclamation of a national fast afforded the fitting 
 opportunity. Jeremiah was at this time for some reason 
 'hindered 2 ' from appearing in the Temple, and dele- 
 gated the hazardous task to Baruch (ch. xxxvi). It is clear 
 that by this time tidings of what had happened on the 
 Euphrates had reached Jerusalem, and both in the court 
 and among the people the gloomiest apprehensions pre- 
 vailed. The prospect of another invasion like that of 
 Sennacherib in 701 was enough to fill the boldest with 
 alarm; and the king, shivering over his winter fire 
 (v. 22), must have shivered inwardly as he contemplated 
 the miscarriage of the mistaken policy which for four 
 short years had kept him on the throne. Now, if ever, 
 Jeremiah may have thought, the nation was in a mood 
 to listen to his message. 
 
 1 From a comparison of xxxvi. I with xxxvi. 9 it would seem to follow 
 that at least nine months elapsed between the writing and the reading 
 of the roll. But this improbably long interval is reduced to a minimum 
 of three months if we assume that the years are reckoned according to the 
 old Hebrew calendar from harvest to harvest, while the numbering of 
 the months follows (as always) the Babylonian calendar, whose year 
 began in the spring. The fifth year of Jehoiakim would then be from 
 Oct. 604 to Sept. 603, and the ninth month of that year would be Dec. 
 604; and if the roll was written in the end of the fourth year of the reign 
 it could have been read within little more than three months from that 
 time. So Steuernagel, Einleitung, p. 539. 
 
 1 *Y)y> v - 5- The word is used in some obscure technical sense in 
 I Sam. xxi. 8, Neh. vi. 10, but neither of these passages throws any 
 light on the cause of Jeremiah's exclusion. It is clear from the narrative 
 that imprisonment (as in xxxiii. I, xxxix. 15) is not indicated; and we 
 seem reduced to the alternative between some Levitical defilement con- 
 tracted by the prophet, and an interdict imposed on him by the Temple 
 authorities in consequence of the incidents recorded in ch. xxvi.
 
 238 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 The sequel showed that he had not altogether mis- 
 judged the effect of this novel appeal to the chastened 
 disposition of the people. The multitude listened to 
 Baruch without murmur or tumult. Even the priests 
 and prophets were awed into silence and inaction. It is 
 a little more difficult to divine the attitude of the nobles. 
 It appears that we have to distinguish two groups of 
 the aristocracy. The first is the sarim, the ministers of 
 State and royal councillors, who during the public 
 reading of the roll were in conclave in the palace in the 
 chamber of Elishama the secretary: five of these are 
 named. The other group consists of the 'servants of the 
 king' the courtiers proper, and the royal princes, who 
 were in attendance on their master in an inner chamber 
 of the winter palace; and of these, three happen to be 
 mentioned. When we observe this distinction the situa- 
 tion becomes a little more clear. It is evident that the 
 ministers were deeply impressed. When the proceedings 
 in the Temple court are announced to them, they send 
 for Baruch, and make him sit down and read the 
 volume in their hearing. When he had finished they 
 took counsel together (LXX), or sat with awe-struck 
 faces (MT), and decided that they must report the 
 matter to the king. But first they urge Baruch to go 
 with Jeremiah into hiding, obviously in order to screen 
 them from the vengeance of Jehoiakim. Of the courtiers, 
 on the other hand, it is recorded in v. 24 that they, like 
 the king, 'trembled not nor rent their clothes': i.e. 
 they felt or affected a supercilious contempt for the 
 words of the prophet. We thus see that there was a 
 cleavage between the king with his immediate entourage 
 and the high officials who conducted the business of 
 state : whence we may conclude that Jehoiakim had not 
 yet succeeded in forming a government after his own 
 mind. It is noteworthy that among the well-disposed 
 aristocrats the family of Shaphan, so stedfast in its
 
 xn] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 239 
 
 loyalty to Jeremiah, is again represented (vv. I o f.), 
 and a son of Shaphan was one of the three (in LXX 
 two) ministers who tried to prevent the king from 
 burning the roll 1 (v. 25)*. 
 
 The important point for us is that this was a repro- 
 duction of old prophecies of doom extending back to 
 the beginning of Jeremiah's ministry. The significance 
 of this fact is unmistakable. It means that to Jeremiah 
 the end is now in sight, and the way of its coming in 
 the main apparent. The new power of Babylon is the 
 instrument fashioned by Yahwe for the execution of 
 His purpose to destroy the remnant of His people 
 Israel. In the contest being waged on the banks of the 
 Euphrates the prophet recognises one of the great 
 turning points of history, which change the face of 
 human affairs and direct the stream of national destiny 
 into new channels 3. Henceforth the sceptre of empire 
 
 1 The LXX, however, reads the opposite. 
 
 z A critic would give a good deal to know the contents of the roll 
 read by Baruch on this occasion. It cannot have been very long, for it 
 was read through three times within a few hours. Neither can it have been 
 very short, if it contained all the words spoken by Yahwe to Jeremiah 
 'against Jerusalem and Judah' up to that time. Everything goes to show 
 that it is all comprised within the first 2 5 chapters of the present book, 
 excluding of course prophecies of later date than 604, and the numerous 
 editorial expansions of those which remain, and probably excluding 
 also the private confessions and prayers of Jeremiah, and possibly the 
 promises of restoration in ch. iii, and other pieces irrelevant to the 
 prophet's immediate purpose. All this is more or less uncertain; and it 
 is very doubtful if the common opinion be correct, that the recovery of 
 the original roll would give us the key to the structure of the present 
 book of Jeremiah. 
 
 3 If we could believe, as some good scholars do, that ch. xlvi 
 contains genuine oracles of Jeremiah, we should have evidence that he 
 watched the struggle with a gloating satisfaction over the impending 
 overthrow of Egypt. But the whole of that chapter is so unlike anything 
 else from the pen of Jeremiah that I must regard it as the work of an 
 anonymous, perhaps contemporary, poet, with a genius akin to that of 
 Nahum. The mixed authorship of the foreign prophecies in chs.
 
 240 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 has been transferred in God's providence to Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, and he is irresistible until his mandate is ex- 
 hausted. The political implications of this conviction 
 are not yet drawn out : that is reserved for later instruc- 
 tion. The immediate purpose of the prophet is to drive 
 home the truth that the judgment is near, and the 
 manner of it determined. 
 
 The publication of these early prophecies, long after 
 the Scythians had ceased to be the troublers of Asia, 
 and when the Babylonian empire was the rising power 
 in the east, would be enough of itself to prove that 
 Jeremiah identified the Chaldeans with the Foe from 
 the North of his youthful visions. A more direct proof, 
 however, may be found in the first thirteen verses of 
 ch. xxv, when read in their original text and con- 
 nexion. It is a bold but very plausible conjecture that 
 in these verses we have the conclusion 1 of the volume 
 of prophecies dictated by Jeremiah to Baruch in the 
 year 604. Following the simpler text of the LXX, and 
 omitting superfluous clauses, we obtain the following 
 peroration : 
 
 [ x The word that came to Jeremiah concerning the whole 
 people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, 
 king of Judah.] 
 
 3 Since the thirteenth year of Josiah, son of Amon, king of 
 Judah, to this day, three and twenty years long, I have spoken 
 to you early and late, 5 saying 'Turn you every one from his 
 evil way and from the wickedness of your actions; thus shall you 
 dwell in the land which Yahwe has given to you and your 
 fathers for ever and ever.' 7 But you have not listened to me. 
 8 Therefore Yahwe has spoken thus: 'Forasmuch as you have 
 not listened to My words, 9 1 send and bring a people from the 
 North, and bring it against this land and its inhabitants, and all 
 
 xlvi-li is generally recognised; and the effort to disentangle a Jeremianic 
 nucleus in the various oracles hardly repays the labour spent upon it. 
 1 Rather than the Introduction, as Rothstein and others have thought.
 
 xii] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 241 
 
 the peoples round about it. I will lay them waste, and make them 
 a perpetual desolation and hissing and derision; 10 I will banish 
 from them the sound of joy and mirth, the voice of the bride- 
 groom and of the bride, the sound of the mill stones and the light 
 of the lamp. ZI And they shall serve among the nations seventy 
 years. x 3Thus will I bring upon this land all My words which 
 I have spoken against it, even all that is written in this book 1 .' 
 
 It will be seen that the date is the same as that of 
 ch. xxxvi, and that the passage closes with a refer- 
 ence to a 'book' clearly assumed to be known to the 
 hearers or readers. We are naturally led to the conclu- 
 sion that this book is none other than the roll which 
 Jehoiakim cut up and burned, but which was afterwards 
 
 1 This restoration of the text is arrived at by a somewhat intricate 
 but quite convincing train of critical reasoning, for the details of which 
 the reader must be referred to the larger commentaries (such as Cornill or 
 Rothstein), or to Buttenwieser's lucid summary (op. cit. pp. 46 f.). The 
 chief source of confusion lies in the fact that the oracles against foreign 
 nations (now found in chs. xlvi-li of the Hebrew) stood at one time 
 in the MT (as they still do in the LXX) immediately after v . 1 3, as read 
 above. This is proved by certain modifications of the text in Hebrew 
 which obviously presuppose the immediate sequence of heathen 
 prophecies, of which modifications the LXX has curiously enough kept 
 clear. Thus in p. 1 1 the words 'they (i.e. the people of Judah) shall be 
 servants among the nations' (LXX) were changed so as to read 'these 
 (the foreign) peoples shall serve the king of Babylon'; and some smaller 
 alterations reveal the same assumption. The threat against Babylon in 
 v. 1 2, although found both in the LXX and the MT, must be a later 
 insertion; its repetition in v. 14 is peculiar to the Hebrew. In the LXX 
 the collection of foreign prophecies has as its heading: 'That which 
 Jeremiah prophesied against the nations.' When these prophecies were 
 removed by the editors of the Hebrew text to the end of the book, this 
 heading was inadvertently left; and now forms the last clause of v. 13: 
 '(this book) which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations.* 
 The result is that a passage originally written as the conclusion of a book 
 against Judah (as is expressly stated in v. i and understood in w. 3 ff.) 
 was transformed into the introduction to a series of oracles against the 
 heathen nations. The explicit references to Nebuchadnezzar and the 
 Babylonians are all absent from the LXX, and must have been added 
 in the course of the Hebrew redaction. 
 
 S.P.R. 16
 
 242 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 rewritten by Baruch, and that vv. 313 are the original 
 peroration of that book, to which an editor has prefixed 
 a title giving the correct date of its composition. And 
 it is to be noted that throughout the passage (as the 
 LXX shows) the Babylonians are never once named, 
 but only vaguely described as a 'people from the 
 North 1 .' Such a designation would have little appro- 
 priateness as applied to the Chaldeans apart from the 
 association of ideas established by previous anticipations 
 of danger from that quarter. 
 
 Among Jeremiah's later poems there is one which 
 breathes something of the spirit of the early Scythian 
 poems, and in which the Babylonians are again spoken 
 of as coming from the North. It is addressed to Jeru- 
 salem as the ideal shepherdess of the nation, whose fair 
 flock is scattered by a desert wind in the day of Yahwe's 
 anger (xiii. 2027). 
 
 20 Lift up thine eyes, and see 2 
 
 How they come from the North ! 
 Where is the flock that was given thee 
 Thy beautiful flock? 
 
 21 What wilt thou say when thou findest 
 
 Set o'er thee as heads 
 Them whom thyself mad'st familiar 
 
 With thee as friendsS ? 
 Will not agonies seize thee 
 
 Like a woman in travail? 
 
 22 Or if thou say in thy heart 
 
 'Why has this come upon me?' 
 
 1 It is true that in xxxvi. 29 Jehoiakim is represented as saying that 
 the king of Babylon was mentioned in the roll. That only means, 
 however, that in the opinion of the narrator Jehoiakim knew perfectly 
 well what was in Jeremiah's mind. 
 
 2 The sing, address is to be maintained throughout, as in 
 LXX. 
 
 3 In r. 21, read VlpS*: and transfer feJ>{O7 from the end of the 
 
 I: : T' 
 fourth line to the second.
 
 xn] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 243 
 
 For thy many transgressions thy skirts are upturned, 
 Rudely exposed thy limbs! 
 
 2 3 If the negro can change his skin, 
 
 Or the panther his stripes, 
 Then may you, accustomed to evil, 
 
 Learn to do good ! 
 2 4So I chased them away like chaff 
 
 Blown by the desert wind. 
 
 2 5 This is thy lot, the portion assigned thee 
 
 By Me, saith Yahwe 
 Since Me thou hast wholly forgotten, 
 
 Trusting in lies. 
 
 ******* 
 2 7 On all the hills of the landscape 
 
 I have seen thy horrors 1 . 
 
 Woe to thee, Jerusalem ! Thou wilt not be clean- 
 For how long yet? 
 
 The northern foes are here described as those whom 
 Jerusalem has known of old as 'lovers'; i.e. has had 
 illicit religious and political relations with them (cf. 
 2 Kings xx. 12 ff.; Ezek. xxiii. 12 ff.). How will she feel 
 when they become her tyrants, and treat her with the 
 indignities used to a rejected concubine slave? For this 
 is the fate appointed her by Yahwe, on account of her 
 sins. Yet the poem closes with a sigh of poignant regret, 
 which calls to mind two earlier apostrophes to Jeru- 
 salem, and forms a climax to them. In iv. 14 we read: 
 O Jerusalem, cleanse thee from sin, 
 
 If thou wouldst be saved. 
 How long shall lodge in thy breast 
 Thy dissolute thoughts? 
 
 1 The poem has suffered some disturbance of its original structure. 
 I agree with Erbt that v. 23 (addressed to individuals of the nation) is, 
 though undoubtedly Jeremiah's, out of place here; and it is plausible, 
 with the same scholar, to place v. 24 immediately after 20. His reasons 
 for rejecting 22 are less convincing. V. 26 is untranslatable for more 
 reasons than one. 
 
 1 6 2
 
 244 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 In vi. 8 : 
 
 Be warned, O Jerusalem, lest my soul 
 
 Be estranged from thee. 
 And here: 
 
 Woe to thee, Jerusalem ! Thou wilt not be clean 
 For how long yet? 
 
 The same fond clinging to Jerusalem, the same 
 reluctance to abandon hope of her future, appears in 
 each of these ejaculations, and reveals an aspect of 
 Jeremiah's mind which is apt to be overlooked: viz. 
 his underlying faith in some permanent principle of 
 good enshrined in the history of Israel. And, strange to 
 say, this hope is not extinguished even at the last. For, 
 as Duhm points out, the purification of the sacred city 
 is a long and weary process, but not impossible. The 
 prophet's thoughts already stretch beyond the judg- 
 ment to a time of restoration and blessedness a hope 
 which was to blossom forth in the ideal visions of a 
 new Israel which brightened the evening of his life (see 
 below, Chap. xvi). 
 
 If the poem last quoted belongs, as it may, to the 
 period of the Chaldean victory at Carchemish, we may 
 with less hesitation assign to the same situation the 
 more sombre utterance of ch. xiii. 15-17, which gives 
 an impressive picture of the doomed nation walking 
 in self-willed pride to destruction under the waning 
 light of the day of grace : 
 
 J 5 Hear and give ear, and be not proud ! 
 
 For Yahwe has spoken. 
 16 Give Yahwe your God the glory, 
 
 Ere it grow dark: 
 Before your feet stumble 
 
 On darkening mountains, 
 And you wait for light, but darkness is there, 
 And he turns it to gloom.
 
 xn] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 245 
 
 J 7But if you will not hear it: 
 
 In secret my soul shall weep 
 
 Because of your pride; 
 And my eye run down with tears, 
 
 For Yahwe's flock is led captive. 
 
 The captivity of Yahwe's flock is here spoken of in 
 the accent of prophetic certainty, as if it were an accom- 
 plished fact; although many years were to elapse and 
 many new situations to be faced before the end actually 
 came. For the time being Jehoiakim saved his throne 
 by tendering a prompt submission to Nebuchadnezzar. 
 But after three years of half-hearted allegiance his rest- 
 less ambition and political rashness led him to tempt 
 his fate by renouncing his fealty. Nebuchadnezzar, who 
 must have had weightier cares on his hands at the 
 moment, retaliated by letting loose guerilla bands of 
 Chaldeans, Arameans, Moabites, etc., to keep him in 
 play till he himself should be in a position to deal with 
 him effectually (2 Kings xxiv. 2) 1 . In the midst of these 
 troubles Jehoiakim died, leaving his widow and eighteen- 
 year-old son, and his unhappy country, to reap the 
 consequences of his perfidy and folly. 
 
 A difficult and obscure prophecy of Jeremiah is 
 perhaps to be explained by the circumstances of this 
 revolt. It stands in ch. xxii. 2022, in the collection 
 of oracles on the kings of Judah, between those on 
 Jehoiakim and on Jehoiachin; and that is probably its 
 true chronological setting at the end of Jehoiakim 's 
 reign. 
 
 20 Go up to Lebanon and cry ! 
 
 In Bashan lift up thy voice! 
 Cry from the mount of Abarim, 
 
 For broken are all thy lovers*. 
 
 1 This is probably the background of the prophecy of ch. xii. 
 7-12. 
 
 2 See the following Note.
 
 246 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 21 1 spoke to thee in thy time of ease; 
 
 Thou saidst, * I will not hear ! ' 
 Such was thy way from thy youth till now, 
 Thou wouldst not hear My voice. 
 
 22 All thy friends the wind sweeps off, 
 
 Thy lovers are captive gone; 
 Ashamed and confounded shalt thou be 
 For all thy evil ways. 
 
 Here the personified people is called on to ascend the 
 heights of Lebanon, Bashan and Abarim, the three 
 mountainous regions north and east of the land, and 
 see that all its defences 1 are broken down. It is not 
 unlikely that, as Erbt has suggested, this signifies the 
 break-up of a coalition of West-Asiatic states against 
 Babylon, in which Judah was involved. That such a 
 coalition existed at the time of Jehoiakim's rebellion 
 we are nowhere informed; but it is very credible, and 
 indeed in the circumstances of the case almost a matter 
 of course. Moab and Ammon are excluded by 2 Kings 
 xxiv. 2; but there remain Tyre and other northerly 
 states; and Tyre is known to have been hostile to 
 Babylon at this time 2 . These would be the 'lovers' and 
 'friends 3,' who are as good as led into captivity, leaving 
 Judah naked to her enemy. In a single sentence Jere- 
 miah drives home the lesson of the coming catastrophe : 
 disobedience, indifference to Yahwe's warnings, especi- 
 ally in the time of respite and fancied security that 
 followed the inauguration of the Covenant this is the 
 moral cause of the ruin that is impending, the shame 
 and confusion that will fall upon the nation. 
 
 1 One is tempted to read THtD^D for T^nNft in v - 2O - 
 is seldom used of human beings. 
 
 2 See Kittel, Geschichte, n, p. 549 n. I ; Erbt, Jeremia u. s. Zfit., 
 p. 277. 
 
 3 In v. 22, we may point TST] instead of "TSTl ('shepherds').
 
 xii] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 247 
 
 Before leaving the reign of Jehoiakim we may quote 
 two impassioned philippics of Jeremiah, which reveal 
 the embittered relations that existed between that 
 monarch and the prophet. The first and more illumin- 
 ating of the two was called forth by the erection of a 
 sumptuous palace on Mount Zion in which Jehoiakim 
 evidently took a peculiar pride. Built by forced labour, 
 with callous disregard of the rights of the wage-earners, 
 and lavishly decorated after approved foreign models, 
 it symbolised a conception of royalty which Jeremiah 
 repudiated with his whole heart (ch. xxii. 1317): 
 
 x 3Woe to him who builds his house with injustice 
 
 His storeys with wrong! 
 Who makes his fellow-man serve for nought, 
 
 And keeps back his wage. 
 J 4Who says 'I will build me a spacious house, 
 
 With roomy chambers; 
 
 Well-lighted with windows, panelled with cedar, 
 And bright with red paint ! ' 
 
 X 5 Is it thus thou wouldst play the king 
 
 By outvieing in cedar? 
 Did not thy father eat and drink, 
 
 And do himself well 1 ? 
 Yet he practised justice and right, 
 16 Judged the cause of the needy and poor: 
 Was not this to know Me in truth? 
 Saith Yahwe (of hosts). 
 
 X 7 But thou hast nor eyes nor thought 
 
 For aught save thy gain: 
 For the innocent blood thou canst shed*, 
 The murder thou canst do ! 
 
 If we suppose this oracle to have been delivered in 
 
 1 So we may render the Heb. phrase with Duhm and Cornill, 
 inserting here (with LXX) iS 3itDl instead of the double [p] 31B TN 
 of the Heb. (i 5 b and 16 a). Omitting pgf JJJ1 ^V
 
 248 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. 
 
 public, perhaps in front of the unfinished palace, we 
 can understand the implacable resentment which was 
 roused in the mind of the king against Jeremiah ! The 
 most interesting feature of the passage, however, is the 
 by no means overdrawn eulogy of Josiah's regal virtues, 
 which are held up as a rebuke to his unworthy son. An 
 earnest, God-fearing man, enjoying in measure the 
 pleasures of the table (in this resembling Charlemagne, 
 and William the Silent, and other distinguished per- 
 sonages), but resolute in administering justice and 
 upholding the rights of the poor; such is Jeremiah's 
 portrait of the king who had made Deuteronomy not 
 only the law of the realm, but also the rule of his own 
 life 'Was not this to know Me?' saith Yahwe. 
 
 The second oracle on Jehoiakim (xxii. 18, 19) prob- 
 ably gives the exact form of the curse pronounced by 
 Jeremiah on the king after his burning of the roll, 
 summarised by Baruch in xxxvi. 30. 
 18 Woe upon this man, 
 
 Upon Jehoiakim 1 ! 
 None shall lament for him: 'Alas, my brother!' 
 
 Or: 'Alas, O sister!' 
 None shall bewail him: 'Alas, O lord!' 
 
 Or: 'Alas for his majesty!' 
 X 9 With the burial of an ass shall he be buried, 
 
 Dragged along and flung forth 
 
 Without the gates of Jerusalem. 
 
 It is by no means certain that this prediction was not 
 fulfilled. Although 2 Kings xxiv. 6 gives the impression 
 that Jehoiakim died a peaceful death, it is noteworthy 
 that nothing is said of his burial 2 ; and the statement in 
 
 1 In the Heb. text the opening lines of the poem have been lost 
 in the superscription. The first line above stands in the LXX; the second 
 is supplied by a felicitous conjecture of Cornill. 
 
 3 The only other king of Judah whose burying place is not recorded 
 is Hezekiah (2 Kings xr. 21): the omission here is certainly accidental, 
 but it does not follow that it is accidental in the case of Jehoiakim.
 
 xii] THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH 249 
 
 the LXX of 2 Chron. xxxvi. 8 that he was buried in the 
 garden of Uzza may have been borrowed from the 
 similar notices about Manasseh and Amon (2 Kings 
 xxi. 1 8, 26). Two possibilities remain open: the death 
 of this unpopular monarch may have been followed by 
 a tumult in which his dead body was dishonoured by 
 the mob. Or the Chaldeans, when they entered the city, 
 may have disinterred the corpse and exposed it to the 
 indignities here described (cf. ch. viii. I ff.). Some 
 kind of fulfilment the prophecy must have had, or its 
 substance would hardly have been preserved in two 
 separate forms. 
 
 To the brief reign of Jehoiachin we may confidently 
 assign the following poem, addressed to the young king 
 and his mother. It probably describes the success of 
 the guerilla bands of Chaldeans, etc., in cutting off the 
 southernmost cities from contact with Jerusalem (xiii. 
 18, 19): 
 
 18 Say to the king and queen-mother, 
 
 'Sit low in the dust! 
 For down from your heads is fallen 
 
 The crown of your pride ! 
 x 9The towns of the Southland are closed, 
 
 With none to open ! 
 All Judah is gone into exile 
 
 Clean swept away ! ' 
 
 Jeremiah's political attitude at this time is revealed 
 in two oracles on Jehoiachin, which surprise us by the 
 uncompromising severity of their judgment on the fate 
 of the king. Their tone is probably due to certain 
 popular aspirations which gathered round his person 
 rather than to anything in the character of Jehoiachin 
 himself. The first of the two (ch. xxii. 24 ff.) must 
 have been spoken at the beginning of the reign, and 
 gives the impression that the young prince ' was a 
 favourite of the people, and that his accession was 
 welcomed as a release from the self-willed tyranny and
 
 250 THE NEW FOE FROM THE NORTH [CH. xn 
 
 disastrous policy of his father. All such hopes Jeremiah 
 was compelled to shatter. Though Coniah (Jehoiachin) 
 were really as the people thought the signet ring 
 on Yahwe's right hand, yet Yahwe would pluck him 
 off and hurl him into a foreign land where he would 
 die. The second (xxii. 2830) was published after 
 Jehoiachin had surrendered and thrown himself on the 
 clemency of Nebuchadnezzar, and been carried a 
 prisoner to Babylon. It is obviously intended to counter- 
 act a prevalent expectation that he would speedily 
 return triumphant over all opposition, and reign as the 
 legitimate heir to the kingdom of his fathers. 
 28 Is he an image despised and broken 
 
 This man Coniah? 
 
 Or a vessel misliked ? 
 Why was he hurled and cast forth 1 
 
 To a land that he knew not? 
 2 9 O land, land, land! Hear the word of Yahwe: 
 30 'Write this man down as childless, 
 
 A man unprosperous all his days; 
 For none of his seed shall prosper 
 
 Sitting on David's throne, 
 
 And ruling in Judah again ! ' 
 
 It was therefore, we may surmise, for no fault of his 
 own, but simply to cut off the delusive hopes that 
 attached themselves to his person, that Jeremiah issued 
 this unsparing denunciation of one whose misfortunes 
 were fitted to awaken sympathy. The point of the pre- 
 diction is not that Jehoiachin shall die childless (which 
 as a matter of fact he did not), but that he may be 
 written down as childless so far as any prospect of his 
 descendants occupying the throne was concerned. 
 Through this passage we obtain a glimpse of an aspect 
 of the new political situation which, as we shall see in 
 the next chapter, was to determine Jeremiah's attitude 
 profoundly for several years to come. 
 
 1 Omitting Ijnfl 50PI an d changing the verbs to sing.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE WAY OF LIFE AND THE WAY 
 OF DEATH 
 
 ^ II ^HE first deportation of Jews to Babylon took place 
 JL about the year 597 B.C. With Jehoiachin there 
 went into exile, though not like him into imprisonment, 
 the elite of the Judean population: the priests, the 
 nobles, the soldiers, and the skilled artisans; and of 
 these elements the first colony of exiles was formed on 
 the banks of the Euphrates. Most of the liberal-minded 
 and experienced statesmen who had shielded Jeremiah 
 from the fury of the mob and from the vindictive 
 enmity of Jehoiakim had been taken away, and their 
 places were filled by a lower class of men whose 
 interests were opposed to theirs, and among whom the 
 prophet must have found very few friends. During the 
 next eleven years the current of Jewish life ran in two 
 parallel channels, one in Jerusalem and the other in 
 Babylonia; and there was intense animosity among the 
 exiled aristocracy against the -parvenus in the homeland 
 who had usurped their privileges and appropriated their 
 possessions. 
 
 At first Jeremiah's sympathies were with the exiles. 
 They are the 'good figs' of the vision recorded in ch. 
 xxiv, as contrasted with the 'rotten figs,' which sym- 
 bolised the worthless remnant left in Jerusalem. But 
 soon there arose in Babylonia a seditious agitation 
 against the Chaldean government which called forth 
 the sternest condemnation on the part of the prophet. 
 It was, as we have seen, to counteract this movement 
 that he uttered the second of his oracles against Jehoia-
 
 252 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 chin, whose liberation was hoped for, and under whom 
 the exiles expected the restoration of an independent 
 Jewish kingdom with themselves in the seats of power. 
 This was the occasion of the remarkable letter to the 
 exiles contained in ch. xxix, in which Jeremiah carries 
 the counsel to political quietism further than any other 
 prophet had done. It not merely inculcates submission 
 to the irresistible power of the Chaldean empire, or 
 merely making the best of an unhappy situation, but 
 it urges the cultivation of a friendly spirit towards the 
 foreign state of which these men were involuntary 
 members (v. 7). And it closes with a warning against 
 the influence of the prophets who were fanning the 
 agitation, and whose appearance in Babylon was hailed 
 by the exiles as a sign that though banished from the 
 Temple and the holy land they were not cast off by 
 Yahwe(w. 8, i5fT.). 
 
 There is no doubt that this message was precisely 
 the kind of advice which the new king Zedekiah would 
 have wished the exiles to lay to heart; and indeed, if 
 (as some think) the mention of seventy years as the 
 limit of the Chaldean domination (v. 10) be a later 
 insertion, it would have been acceptable to the imperial 
 government. It is quite conceivable, therefore, that it 
 was sent with the knowledge of the king and the Baby- 
 lonian Resident in Jerusalem; for Jeremiah must have 
 had access to court circles when he was able to use royal 
 plenipotentiaries as bearers of his letter (v. 3). In any 
 case we can see that the letter is informed by sound 
 political judgment no less than by religious conviction; 
 and it may even be based on some knowledge of the 
 liberal spirit which animated the policy of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar. But to make this the main purpose of the 
 document to regard it as a mere political manifesto 
 with no higher object than to further the interest of 
 Babylon is to miss its profound religious significance.
 
 xm] THE WAY OF DEATH 253 
 
 To that aspect of it we shall return when we come to 
 consider Jeremiah's teaching on the future of religion. 
 
 The sequel to the reception of the letter throws some 
 light on the state of parties in Jerusalem. It is very 
 intelligible that the anti-Babylonian faction among the 
 exiles resented Jeremiah's interference, and took 
 measures to have him silenced. But it is perhaps 
 significant that the remonstrance they addressed to 
 Jerusalem for this purpose was sent not to the king but 
 to Zephaniah the priest, who as responsible for order 
 in the Temple is reproached for allowing a dangerous 
 lunatic like Jeremiah to go at large (xxix. 24 ff.). But 
 the priest contented himself with reading this missive 
 to Jeremiah. From the assumption that this was a 
 friendly act, it has been concluded that the higher 
 offices in the Temple were now filled by men of a 
 different stamp from those who had persecuted the 
 prophet in the past. It is more likely, however, that 
 Shemaiah, the writer of the letter, and Zephaniah were 
 working together, and that the priest's purpose was to 
 frighten Jeremiah, although he did not dare to imitate 
 the cruelties perpetrated by Pashhur under the rule of 
 Jehoiakim (ch. xx. i ff.). 
 
 Soon afterwards we find that the revolutionary spirit 
 had broken out in Judea. About the middle of Zede- 
 kiah's reign emissaries from several neighbouring states 
 assembled in Jerusalem to concert measures of revolt 
 from Babylon (ch. xxvii. 1-4). Jeremiah put forth all 
 his energies to prevent the nation being plunged into 
 a second disastrous war with Nebuchadnezzar. The 
 fact that he alone appears as opposing the conspiracy 
 has led some critics I to suppose that the party favourable 
 to Babylon had been driven from power by a pro- 
 Egyptian ministry which sought to force the king into 
 an anti-Chaldean alliance. That theory does not seem 
 1 Schmidt, op. cit. pp. 313 f., 325.
 
 254 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 to be necessary or even probable. It was obviously 
 contrary to the interest of Zedekiah to fall in with a 
 movement which must have aimed at his own deposition 
 in favour of his nephew Jehoiachin. The inflammable 
 patriotism of the populace was easily played upon by 
 fanatical prophets of the type of Hananiah of Gibeon 
 (ch. xxviii), who were doubtless in touch with the 
 parallel movement among the exiles; and when their 
 influence was reinforced by the prospect of help from 
 Egypt and a coalition of adjacent countries, it might 
 readily have become too formidable to be controlled 
 by the court. There is no positive evidence that Zede- 
 kiah and his advisers had yielded to the popular 
 clamour; and it is permissible to suppose that they 
 breathed a deep sigh of relief when the agitation died 
 down as suddenly as it arose. Into the details of the 
 narrative and discourses of chs. xxvii and xxviii, and 
 the difficult literary question of the relation of these 
 chapters one to the other, we cannot enter here. It must 
 suffice to say that, whether through Jeremiah's influence 
 or for some other cause, the conspiracy collapsed. It 
 may have been to clear himself from the suspicion of 
 disloyalty that Zedekiah sent to Babylon an embassy 
 headed by two friends of Jeremiah, sons of two prominent 
 promoters of the Deuteronomic reformation: Eleasa 
 the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah 
 (ch. xxix. 3) 1 . 
 
 From this time to the outbreak of the final rebellion 
 a period of about five years we have no information 
 about the course of events in Jerusalem, or of the 
 personal fortunes of Jeremiah. When the curtain is 
 
 1 If ch. li. 59-64 were genuine, and Zedekiah in person had to go 
 to Babylon to explain matters, we might have reason to conclude that 
 he had been more deeply compromised than is suggested above. But 
 there are some grounds for suspecting that the notice there is only a 
 legendary duplicate of xxix. 3.
 
 xmj THE WAY OF DEATH 255 
 
 again raised the city is invested by a Chaldean army 
 (ch. xxxiv. i ff.), and the doubtful issue of the siege is 
 weighing heavily on the mind of the king (xxi. I f.). 
 This means that the anti-Babylonian influence had 
 gained the upper hand in the royal council. Zedekiah 
 is surrounded by a body of hot-headed and reckless 
 political gamblers who, relying on Egyptian support, 
 have staked everything on the chance of a successful 
 resistance to Nebuchadnezzar. The king is a mere 
 puppet in their hands (ch. xxxviii. 5), a weak, irresolute, 
 characterless individual, extremely anxious to know 
 what was right, but utterly incapable of doing it. 
 Jeremiah seems to have understood the difficulty of his 
 position, and treats him with a deference and sympathy 
 such as he never showed to the proud and masterful 
 Jehoiakim. At an early period of the siege he even 
 assured Zedekiah of a peaceful end and an honourable 
 burial (ch. xxxiv. 4 f.), a prophecy dismally falsified by 
 the event (2 Kings xxv. 6 f.; Jer. Hi. iof.). And the 
 king on his part secretly revered the prophet, and would 
 gladly have leaned on his advice. Four times according 
 to the received text 1 he consulted him regarding the 
 issue of the war; and twice (or once) he saved him from 
 a cruel death at the hands of his enemies. 
 
 This part of Jeremiah's life is crowded with incidents 
 of the highest biographical interest, but we can only 
 touch upon them slightly here. For the first part of the 
 siege he was at liberty (ch. xxxvii. 4), and so far as we 
 read unmolested. The change came when the Chaldean 
 generals were compelled temporarily to suspend the 
 blockade on account of the approach of an Egyptian 
 relieving force, and the people of Jerusalem, in spite of 
 Jeremiah's continued warnings, believed they were to 
 see their foes no more. The wealthy citizens now com- 
 
 1 In reality perhaps only twice. On the probability of duplicate 
 narratives in the biography of Jeremiah see below, pp. 258 ., 274 .
 
 256 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 mitted a public wrong which called forth a vehement 
 protest from the prophet. At the beginning of the siege 
 they had made a solemn covenant before Yahwe to 
 release all Hebrews whom they illegally kept as slaves, 
 but no sooner did the danger appear to be over than 
 they violated their oath, and forced their Hebrew 
 brethren and sisters back into servitude (ch. xxxiv. 8 ff.). 
 It has been suggested that Jeremiah's denunciation of 
 this flagrant breach of faith was the cause of the 
 malignity with which he was henceforth pursued by the 
 ruling class in the city. The explanation seems some- 
 what superfluous. There was enough, as we shall see 
 presently, in Jeremiah's general attitude to the war- 
 party to account for the determined attempt on his life 
 which was soon to be made. 
 
 Of Jeremiah's arrest and imprisonment two con- 
 flicting accounts appear to have been current. According 
 to the first, which we read in ch. xxxvii. 1121, he 
 purposed to take advantage of the withdrawal of the 
 besieging army to pay a visit to his native village 1 . 
 When he reached the gate, however, he was arrested 
 by the officer on duty on a charge of deserting to the 
 Chaldeans; and in spite of his protestations of innocence 
 he was seized, beaten, and thrown into the cistern- 
 chamber in the house of Jonathan the secretary, which 
 had been turned into a state-prison for the nonce. There 
 he would have been left' to perish of cold and hunger 
 but for the king's anxiety to get from him some re- 
 assuring word of God regarding the great issue that 
 
 1 The object of the visit is very obscurely expressed by the phrase 
 Dyn "]irO D&?D phrh (* 12)- The LXX renders 'to purchase 
 (food) from thence' a very natural object for the visit, but one difficult 
 to find in the Heb. verb, however vocalised. It is usually supposed 
 that the proposed visit had something to do with the sale of family 
 property which was the occasion of the later interview with his cousin 
 Hanamal (xxxii. 6 ff.).
 
 xm] THE WAY OF DEATH 257 
 
 hung in the balance. At a secret interview in the palace 
 Zedekiah puts to him the timid question, ' Is there any 
 word from Yahwe?' Jeremiah answers curtly, 'There 
 is! You shall fall into the hands of the king of Babylon.' 
 Then he makes a petition for his own personal safety, 
 praying that he may not be sent back to the house of 
 Jonathan to die. The king accordingly gives orders 
 that he should be kept under surveillance in the court 
 of the guard; and there he remained, receiving a daily 
 ration of bread until all the food in the city was con- 
 sumed. 
 
 The other account is given in ch. xxxviii. Jeremiah 
 is denounced to the king by a group of nobles, on the 
 ground that his constant assertion of the futility of 
 resistance, coupled with persistent incitements to 
 desertion, were undermining the courage of the soldiers 
 and citizens. Having extorted Zedekiah's reluctant 
 permission to work their will on the prophet, these men 
 thrust him into a miry cistern, belonging to one of the 
 royal princes, in the court of the guard. Thence he is 
 rescued by an Ethiopian eunuch named Ebed-melech, 
 who impresses on the king the evil he had done 1 in 
 handing Jeremiah over to the will of his enemies, and 
 procures an order to extricate the prophet from the 
 cistern, a task which was accomplished with much 
 difficulty. Zedekiah then, with elaborate precautions 
 against discovery, arranged a private interview at some 
 place between the palace and the Temple. Having first 
 obtained a solemn promise that he would not be given 
 over to the men who sought his life, Jeremiah urged 
 the king in the name of Yahwe to surrender to the 
 Chaldeans. The king made the strange excuse that he 
 dreaded being made the victim of insult or outrage by 
 the Jews who had already found refuge in the Chaldean 
 camp. Jeremiah assures him that that fear is groundless, 
 ' SoLXX. 
 
 S.P.R. 17
 
 258 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 but that he would deservedly be exposed to a far more 
 bitter taunt unless he broke away from the counsel of 
 the men who were leading him to ruin. He describes a 
 vision which Yahwe had showed him of the women of 
 the palace being led out in procession to the officers of 
 the Babylonian army; and as they pass before their king 
 they chant this mocking song: 
 
 They goaded thee on and coerced thee 
 
 The men of thy trust; 
 When thy feet were plunged in the mire, 
 
 They turned thee their backs. 
 
 (Ch. xxxviii. 22.) 
 
 Here Zedekiah, irresolute as ever, cut short the 
 interview, adjuring the prophet not to divulge to any 
 one what had passed, but to pretend that he had merely 
 petitioned the king against being again consigned to 
 the house of Jonathan. By this prevarication the sus- 
 picious curiosity of the s arim was allayed, and Jeremiah 
 henceforth was left in peace in the court of the guard 
 until the fall of the city 1 . 
 
 1 The two accounts are commonly considered to refer to two separate 
 and consecutive incidents in the history of Jeremiah's persecutions, the 
 second recording a fresh attack on his life after the first had been 
 frustrated by the intervention of the king. It is no doubt possible to 
 connect them in that way, if we can suppose that the offence with which 
 he is charged in xxxviii. I ff. could have been committed while he was 
 a prisoner in the court of the guard. That appears to me hardly credible; 
 and since the hypothesis that he had regained his freedom after his first 
 imprisonment is excluded by xxxvii. 21, we seem shut up to the con- 
 clusion that the opening of ch. xxxviii takes us back to the time when 
 Jeremiah was still at liberty (xxxvii. 4), and gives an independent report 
 of the circumstances of his arrest and committal to a dungeon. It may 
 be necessary to suppose that ch. xxxviii was originally preceded by a 
 r/jaw/of the prophecies quoted by his accusers in vv. 2, 3, such as we 
 find almost verbatim in xxi. 8, 9, xxxiv. 2 (cf. xxxii. 25), all of which 
 were obviously spoken while he was still free to come and go in the city. 
 The indications of overlapping come out most clearly in the verses 
 dealing with the interview between Jeremiah and Zedekiah (xxxvii.
 
 xmj THE WAY OF DEATH 259 
 
 It is difficult, for reasons stated in the note below, to 
 overcome the impression that these are two independent 
 and irreconcilable narratives of Jeremiah's persecution 
 by the nobles and his secret meetings with the king. 
 Which of them represents most faithfully the actual 
 circumstances it is impossible to decide. Although the 
 second raises more difficulties than the first, we should 
 
 17-21 = xxxviii. 14-27). Apart from the general improbability that 
 two such interviews should have taken place in similar circumstances 
 within so short a time, the close parallelism of the narratives strongly 
 suggests that they are but different versions of the same event. In both 
 the king seeks an oracle regarding the fate in store for himself and the 
 city; in both Jeremiah announces the issue, in the first absolutely, in the 
 second with an exhortation (which he knows to be useless) to avoid the 
 uttermost calamity by surrender; in both he asks and obtains protection 
 from the men who were bent on his destruction. This last point is 
 specially significant, inasmuch as xxxviii. 26 brings us back to the same 
 situation as xxxvii. 20. The petition that he might not be sent back to 
 die in the house of Jonathan, recorded in the first narrative, has a mean- 
 ing when he had just been brought from that place to meet the king 
 which it could not have in the second, where in fact no such request is 
 actually mentioned. Finally, in both accounts Jeremiah is left in the 
 court of the guard till the end of the siege. Steuernagel (Einl. pp. 5 57 f.) 
 and Buttenwieser (Prophets, pp. 53 ff.) recognise a doublet in the 
 account of the interview, while holding that the narrative is continuous 
 up to that point. It seems to me that the duplication extends to the whole 
 of ch. xxxviii. 
 
 If the case before us were an isolated one, it might be reasonable to 
 treat the narrative as a unity, and overlook the indications of dual author- 
 ship which have been pointed out. But there are several other cases of 
 a similar kind which taken together make it probable that the story of 
 Jeremiah's life existed in at least two versions, of which it is impossible 
 to say that one is more authoritative than the other. The clearest example 
 is the undoubted parallel between xxxix. 114 and xl. I 6: the account 
 of Jeremiah's liberation after the capture of Jerusalem. Again, several 
 scholars have felt that xxi. i 10 and xxxvii. 310 cannot refer to two 
 different deputations from the king to Jeremiah, but must be variant 
 accounts of the same incident. And there are some obvious doublets in 
 the speeches of chs. xlii-xliv. Hence the theory of a twofold narrative 
 of this episode in Jeremiah's career affords the most plausible solution 
 of the discrepancies between xxxvii. n ff. and xxxviii. 
 
 172
 
 260 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 not be justified in dismissing it as legendary and re- 
 taining the other as historical. It is more probable that 
 each rests on incomplete knowledge of details, the 
 divergences being such as might naturally arise from 
 the reports of different eye-witnesses. We must there- 
 fore be content to accept as historical the main facts, 
 in which they agree: that Jeremiah was suspected of 
 treasonable sentiments and utterances by the leaders of 
 the war party, and narrowly escaped death at their 
 hands; that the king consulted him secretly and would 
 gladly have followed his advice if he had dared. We 
 have now to inquire how far Jeremiah's conduct laid 
 him open to such suspicions. 
 
 We have seen already that for twenty years preceding 
 the fall of Jerusalem, Jeremiah's political attitude had 
 been governed by the conviction that the power of 
 Babylon was established in the purpose of the Almighty, 
 and was irresistible till its mission was fulfilled. From 
 the time of the victory of Carchemish he had looked on 
 the Chaldeans as the destined instruments of Israel's 
 humiliation, through whom all his prophecies of woe 
 were to be realised. At a later period the time of the 
 projected coalition against Babylon (chs. xxvii, xxviii) 
 he speaks of Nebuchadnezzar as the servant of 
 Yahwe, His earthly vicegerent for the time being, to 
 whom He had committed the dominion over the world 
 within Judah's horizon; so that to refuse submission to 
 his authority was to resist the fiat of the Omnipotent. 
 It is by no means improbable that Jeremiah had now 
 learned to appreciate the high qualities of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar's statesmanship; and the letter to the exiles, 
 written about this time, shows that he believed the 
 vital interests of religion to be safe under his just and 
 tolerant rule. 
 
 From this time onward, then, Jeremiah advocated 
 the policy of voluntary submission to the Babylonian
 
 xmj THE WAY OF DEATH 261 
 
 yoke as the only way to mitigate the horrors and agonies 
 of the final dissolution. When the rebellion broke out, 
 and the siege of Jerusalem was begun, he must have 
 seen that resistance was hopeless. He stedfastly affirmed 
 that the city must fall into the hands of the enemy, and 
 that only a timely surrender would save it from being 
 destroyed by fire. Behind the serried ranks of the 
 Chaldean army he beheld the form of Yahwe fighting 
 for them and through them against His own people 
 (ch. xxi. 5, 6). His confidence was not for a moment 
 shaken by the suspension of the siege caused by the 
 approach of Hophra with his relieving army. ' If you 
 should smite all the troops of the Chaldeans that fight 
 against you, so that only mortally wounded men re- 
 mained of them, each in his tent, they would arise and 
 burn this city with fire' (ch. xxxvii. 10). But Jeremiah 
 went much further than this. Not only did he urge the 
 hopelessness of resistance, and advise the king to 
 surrender, but when the king was unable or unwilling 
 to take this course, he counselled private citizens to save 
 their lives by deserting individually. 'See, I set before 
 you the way of life and the way of death. He that remains 
 in this city shall die by sword or famine or pestilence; 
 and he who goes out and deserts to the Chaldeans who 
 are besieging you shall live, and have his life for a prey' 
 (xxi. 8, 9, xxxviii. 2). It is no wonder that the men at 
 the head of affairs, who were responsible for the defence 
 of the city, denounced as worthy of death the man who 
 thus 'weakened the hands of the men of war that re- 
 main in the city, and of all the people' (xxxviii. 4). 
 
 Modern readers, too, have been scandalised by the 
 conduct here imputed to Jeremiah, and many excellent 
 scholars have refused to believe that he could have been 
 guilty of it. To advocate a policy of capitulation on the 
 regular government is one thing; but to incite soldiers 
 or civilians to break their allegiance and go over to the
 
 262 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 enemy is a disloyal and treasonable act, which every 
 right-minded man would condemn as inexcusable under 
 any circumstances whatsoever. Yet the language of 
 xxi. 9 and xxxviii. 2 admits of no other interpretation 1 , 
 and before pronouncing it impossible, or 'shameful,' or 
 unworthy of a prophet, there are several things to be 
 considered. Two ethical questions are involved. The 
 first is whether it is the duty of the individual to sub- 
 ordinate his conscientious convictions to the demand of 
 the State for unanimity in face of a common public 
 danger; and the second is whether, if the State is com- 
 mitted to a course wrong in itself and sure to end in its 
 own destruction, it is ever right for the individual to 
 leave it to its fate and save himself. To the first question 
 the answer of all prophecy, as of all personal religion, 
 is an uncompromising negative. To the prophets of 
 Israel, especially, the preservation of the two Hebrew 
 States, so far from being a supreme object, was an aim 
 inconsistent with their deepest convictions. They saw 
 in these communities hindrances to Yahwe's reign of 
 righteousness, and looked on their overthrow as a moral 
 necessity. The preaching of this doctrine might be 
 described as sedition from the point of view of secular 
 statesmanship, or it might be called enlightened 
 patriotism in so far as it was a call to the nation to repent 
 and escape destruction. But when the call was refused 
 no prophet fell back on the specious maxim of a hectic 
 patriotism, ' My country, right or wrong ! ' As the last 
 
 1 Cornill argues, very unconvincingly, that if in xxi. 9 we omit the 
 
 phrases 7fr$ 7,531 and D^7j? D*"lPl (which are wanting in the 
 parallel verse, xxxviii. 2) the verse contains nothing which Jeremiah 
 might not have said. There is no justification for omitting these words; 
 and even if we do omit them the fact remains that it is an incitement to 
 
 individual surrender. It is true that 7tf X* is the technical term for 
 'capitulate' or 'surrender,' and might be used of the city as a whole; 
 but that it is not so used here is as plain as words could make it.
 
 xmj THE WAY OF DEATH 263 
 
 of these prophets Jeremiah maintained their attitude 
 through the agony of the final catastrophe; and it is not 
 surprising if in the tragic situation he had to face his 
 indifference to the integrity of the State carried him 
 further than any of his predecessors had had occasion 
 to go. 
 
 The other question is perhaps not so easily answered. 
 Whether ' 'tis nobler in the mind* to call for the sacrifice 
 of the individual in the common ruin, or to go to the 
 extreme in the endeavour to save innocent lives and 
 avoid needless suffering, is a problem of casuistry which 
 cannot be settled by general rules. We must remember 
 that Jeremiah himself did not follow the advice he gave 
 to others. The accusation of falling away to the Chal- 
 deans he repudiated with honest indignation (ch. xxxvii. 
 14). He knew that his place was in the doomed city. 
 The inward voice which guided all his actions prompted 
 him to remain at the post of duty, and drain his country's 
 cup of misery to the bitter dregs. Those whom he 
 counselled to save themselves by individual surrender 
 were the private citizens who with their wives and 
 children were being sacrificed to political ambitions in 
 which they had no share, and for which they had no 
 responsibility. 'And why,' asks Dr Peake, 'should he 
 not have advised the people to surrender, when he was 
 certain that resistance was hopeless? He was not the 
 victim of modern military punctilio, common sense and 
 humanitarianism were wholly on his side. It is quite 
 true that those responsible for the defence were justified 
 in their complaints of his utterances from their point 
 of view; but Jeremiah was quite consistent in drawing 
 the practical inference from his prophetic certainty 1 .' 
 
 Jeremiah's persistent advocacy of a 'defeatist' policy 
 has led some historians to represent him as an agent of 
 the Babylonian government, who under the cloak of 
 1 Century Bible on Jeremiah, n, 24 f.
 
 264 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 religion and prophetic inspiration carried on an insidious 
 propaganda in the interest of his country's foes. Dr 
 Hugo Winckler who was, if not the author, the leading 
 exponent of the general view of prophecy on which this 
 opinion rests, wrote of Jeremiah as follows : 
 
 If a Jeremiah was consulted by the king about the line of 
 conduct to be followed towards Nebuchadnezzar, the reason is 
 not that he was a 'prophet' or a wise man of any kind. As a man 
 of property and influence and as one of the leaders of the Chaldean 
 party Jeremiah had communications with Babylon which enabled 
 him to form a clearer judgment of the political situation than 
 the king, who surrounded by the and- Babylonian and pro- 
 Egyptian party was not in a position to arrive at a clear decision. 
 Standing outside the .court-camarilla, Jeremiah as a politician 
 had a more comprehensive outlook on international affairs, 
 because he had the necessary diplomatic connexions, and was 
 able to maintain uninterrupted intercourse with the influential 
 Babylonian circles, whether in Babylon itself or in the immediate 
 vicinity, where Samaria was already the seat of a Chaldean 
 viceroy 1 . 
 
 It is unnecessary to discuss here a theory of prophecy 
 which eliminates from it the moral and spiritual elements 
 in which its real significance lies, and tends to degrade 
 it to the level of a political agency in the service of 
 oriental diplomacy. It may be admitted that Jeremiah 
 is the prophet in whose public action the theory finds 
 its most plausible support; but Jeremiah is at the same 
 time the prophet whose experience and teaching taken 
 as a whole render it utterly incredible. It is impossible 
 to believe that the man who wrote the 'Confessions,' 
 to whom the word of God was as a fire in his bones, 
 
 1 Die Keilinschr. u. d. Alte Testament (3rd Ed.), p. 170. In justice 
 to Winckler I call attention to an earlier utterance of his, too long to 
 quote (Gesc/iicAte Israels, i, noff.), where he gives an estimate of 
 Jeremiah which in my opinion is erroneous, but which does at least 
 . recognise that his activity was based on principles of a semi-religious or 
 ecclesiastical kind.
 
 xm] THE WAY OF DEATH 265 
 
 who had braved every indignity and outrage at the 
 hands of his opponents because of his unflinching sted- 
 fastness in delivering his message, would prostitute his 
 gifts and influence to the service of a foreign power. 
 Traitors and intriguers are not the stuff of which martyrs 
 are made, and however advantageous to the Chaldean 
 interest Jeremiah's action may have been, we are sure 
 that it was inspired by purer motives and loftier aims 
 than to further the policy of the councillors of the king 
 of Babylon. He had stood in the council chamber of a 
 greater than any earthly potentate, and all the principles 
 which governed his conduct were based on the know- 
 ledge he had there acquired of the mind and purpose 
 of the Almighty. It remains for us to consider somewhat 
 more closely what were the fundamental prophetic ideas 
 which find expression in his public and political action. 
 Like all the prophets, Jeremiah had broken with the 
 popular delusion that the bond between Yahwe and 
 Israel was naturally indissoluble, so that Yahwe must 
 in the last resort intervene to prevent the annihilation 
 of His people by a heathen power. He had also, as we 
 have seen, risen above the more subtle delusion of the 
 Deuteronomists that an ethical bond with Yahwe could 
 be established by a superficial reform of religion under 
 the sanction of a national covenant. With his mind 
 thus freed from the illusions that blinded other men to 
 the signs of the times, he was able to face the stern 
 realities of the political world, and discern the trend of 
 events through which Yahwe was working out His 
 purpose on the stage of history. And there is no denying 
 that an enlightened political judgment, and a clear 
 perception of the forces that were shaping the imme- 
 diate future, had a large share in determining the policy 
 which he urged upon the nation. He realised the 
 immense resources at the disposal of the Babylonian 
 empire, the weakness of any possible coalition against
 
 266 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 it, and the folly of the attempt to assert the independ- 
 ence of Judah by armed force. It is probable also that 
 he knew enough of the character of Nebuchadnezzar 
 to be confident that the true interests of religion would 
 not suffer through submission to his rule. Only it must 
 be recognised that this clear-sighted political judgment 
 was itself the outcome of a deeper prophetic insight. 
 What Jeremiah was fundamentally sure of was that in 
 the purpose of Yah we the kingdom of Judah was 
 doomed, and his observation of the march of events 
 only gave precision to his conception of the manner in 
 which that purpose was to be executed. Thus far there 
 is no material difference between Jeremiah's political 
 attitude and that of the great prophets who had pre- 
 ceded him. They had all foreseen the chastisement of 
 Israel by the world-power of the time; and one of them, 
 Isaiah, had striven to direct the policy of the country 
 in accordance with that prevision. But in Jeremiah 
 prophecy had made an advance which profoundly in- 
 fluenced the whole of his outlook on the future of God's 
 kingdom. He had attained a knowledge of the nature 
 of religion which saw that many things hitherto deemed 
 essential and indispensable belonged to the realm of 
 'things that are shaken.' The bearing of this element 
 in his experience on his political action must now be 
 considered. 
 
 It is here that a comparison with Isaiah becomes 
 specially instructive. It was long ago pointed out by 
 Robertson Smith that Isaiah revived an ancient function 
 of prophecy which had been in abeyance in the work 
 of his two great predecessors. He had combined the 
 announcement of what Yah we was about to do to 
 Israel with directions as to what Israel as a nation ought 
 to do. This must be due to his grasp of some constructive 
 principle which was absent from the thought of Amos 
 and Hosea; and we find such' a principle in the idea of
 
 xm] THE WAY OF DEATH 267 
 
 the Remnant, expressed in the name of the son, Shear 
 Yashub, who accompanied him to the memorable inter- 
 view with Ahaz, where the lines of all his subsequent 
 political activity were laid down. To Isaiah the con- 
 ception of the Remnant embodied the truth that in the 
 national life of Israel there was enshrined an element of 
 permanent value, a principle of continuity between the 
 present and the future, which was indestructible because 
 the preservation of the true religion in the world de- 
 pended on it. The redeemed community of the future 
 already existed in nuce in the Israel of the present, and 
 although the nation as a political entity had to be cut 
 down and its stump to pass through the fire, there was 
 that within it which Yahwe would not suffer to be 
 destroyed. Or, in another metaphor, the foundation of 
 the new kingdom of God was already laid in Zion, and 
 therefore Yahwe would break the power of Assyria 
 when it threatened to sweep away that precious corner 
 stone. This community of the true religion, already 
 formed within Israel, and gathering up in itself all that 
 was of spiritual value in the national life, supplied 
 Isaiah with the motives which inspired his efforts to 
 guide his country in affairs of state. It may not be 
 always easy to see the precise connexion between his 
 fundamental idea and its practical developments; but 
 there is no doubt that the consolidation and conserva- 
 tion of the Remnant was a primary aim of Isaiah's 
 exhortations to the rulers to exercise quiet and confident 
 faith in Yahwe under the direction of the prophetic word. 
 Now there is nothing corresponding to this in the 
 thinking of Jeremiah. For him there was no 'remnant* 
 in Isaiah's sense no seed, that is, of the future in any 
 part of the nation, nothing capable of carrying forward 
 the religious heritage of the past into the perfect religion 
 of the latter days. It had been his mission to test and 
 try every section of society by the word of the Lord,
 
 268 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 and he had found nought but 'refuse silver,' rejected 
 of Yahwe (ch. vi. 30). To him there was no sacred, 
 inviolable mount Zion, symbol and pledge of the 
 spiritual building which Yahwe had founded and would 
 protect. Every national institution of Israel, every form 
 by which tradition had welded the people into political 
 and religious unity priesthood, prophecy, monarchy, 
 temple and sacrifice, law all had been found wanting; 
 the whole fabric of the nation's life was worthless for 
 the ends of God's kingdom. It cannot be, indeed, that 
 Jeremiah held every individual lost to the divine pur- 
 pose; but the individual had value only in virtue of his 
 spiritual humanity, not in virtue of his inheritance in 
 the privileges of the commonwealth of Israel. 
 
 We may expect, therefore, that in spite of superficial 
 resemblances Jeremiah's political teaching will be of a 
 different complexion from Isaiah's. Isaiah exerted him- 
 self to save the State, and in the end did save it, for the 
 sake of the blessing that was in it. Jeremiah was in- 
 different to the preservation of the State, because he 
 knew that it neither could be saved nor was worth 
 saving; and he gave advice which undermined its 
 stability. And again, while both prophets counselled 
 political quietude and submission to a foreign yoke, 
 they did so for opposite reasons. Isaiah denounced 
 opposition to Assyria in the assurance that in the very 
 hour of its triumph Yahwe would intervene for the 
 deliverance of His people. Jeremiah discountenanced 
 resistance to Nebuchadnezzar because he knew that 
 Yahwe would not intervene: because Yahwe had 
 delivered Jerusalem into his hand, and the path of life 
 was surrender to his will. Each prophet was right for 
 his own day: Isaiah in holding that the interests of 
 religion demanded the continuance of the Hebrew 
 State; Jeremiah in perceiving that the time had come 
 for State and State-religion to be done away.
 
 xm] THE WAY OF DEATH 269 
 
 We can now see that the political activity of Jeremiah 
 was rooted in the deepest region of personal experience. 
 He had learned that religion is independent of national 
 institutions and legal forms; he had learned by observa- 
 tion that these things were positive hindrances to that 
 knowledge of God in which true religion consists. He 
 had found the secret springs of religion in his own 
 soul, in fellowship with the God who searched him and 
 knew him, whose word was the joy and delight of his 
 heart. What was true for him must be true universally. 
 Religion lives in the sense of the divine which is im- 
 planted in the human spirit, and draws it upward to its 
 home in God. And hence the new community of religion 
 must be composed of men in whom this direct relation 
 to God is a living reality, who have His revelation in 
 their inward parts, and written in their hearts. To draw 
 out the implications of this conviction in the sphere of 
 eschatology, as they are unfolded in Jeremiah's teaching 
 on the future of religion, is a task reserved for later 
 chapters of this volume. We see enough to explain how 
 he could not only contemplate calmly the disappearance 
 of the Jewish State, with all its venerable institutions 
 and traditions, but even help forward its dissolution, 
 as the only way to liberate religion from its entangle- 
 ment in the forms of a merely national worship of 
 Yah we 1 . In this we have the key to his attitude on the 
 great political issue of his later years. 
 
 The defence of Jerusalem was maintained with the 
 courage of despair for two and a half years. It was only 
 when its powers of resistance had been weakened by 
 famine that the besiegers succeeded in making a breach 
 in the walls. Then the pusillanimous king, who could 
 never bring himself to choose the 'way of life' through 
 honourable surrender pointed out to him by Jeremiah, 
 
 1 See W. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, pp. 262 f.; Welch, 
 Religion of Israel, etc., pp. 237 ff.
 
 270 THE WAY OF LIFE AND [CH. 
 
 deserted his post, and made a last effort to save his life 
 by breaking through the Chaldean lines, surrounded 
 by his men of war. He was overtaken and sent to 
 Nebuchadnezzar's headquarters at Riblah, where he 
 suffered a crueller fate than Jeremiah had warned him 
 of (2 Kings xxv. 7 = Jer. Hi. iof.; cf. Jer. xxxiv. 4 f.). 
 A month later Nebuchadnezzar sent Nebuzaradan, the 
 captain of his bodyguard, to Jerusalem, with orders to 
 dismantle the fortifications and reduce the Temple and 
 the city to ashes. Jeremiah's predictions were thus 
 fulfilled to the letter. We have no prophecy of his which 
 can be securely dated from the time of the city's 
 destruction. There is a poem in ch. xxx. 57 which, if 
 it be a genuine work of Jeremiah, probably belongs to 
 this period; but its authorship is too doubtful, and its 
 religious significance too slight, to make it worth while 
 to quote it here. There is another in ch. xv. 5-9 which, 
 although its actual date be doubtful, will form an 
 appropriate conclusion to the present chapter. It depicts 
 the desolation of Jerusalem as already accomplished, 
 and in such moving terms that even if its language be 
 only the language of prophetic anticipation, it must 
 express the feelings with which he looked back on the 
 history which had culminated in this immeasurable 
 tragedy. It opens with an apostrophe to Jerusalem 
 sitting desolate and solitary, no man turning aside to 
 condole with her in her widowhood and misery. The 
 moral causes of her affliction are indicated: she has 
 exhausted Yahwe's patience by her persistent rebellion, 
 and now at last He has stretched forth His hand to 
 destroy her children. The lurid pictures of horror and 
 bloodshed which follow represent the judgment as past, 
 and it is obviously the final judgment on the nation 
 that is spoken of. The passage reads as follows: 
 5 Who takes pity upon thee, Jerusalem? 
 Who bemoans thee?
 
 xm] THE WAY OF DEATH 271 
 
 And who turns aside from his way 
 To enquire of thy health? 
 
 6 Since thou hast rejected Me, saith Yahwe, 
 
 And wentest backward, 
 With uplifted hand I crushed thee: 
 I was tired of relenting. 
 
 7 So I winnowed them out with the shovel 
 
 In the gates of the land; 
 Have bereaved and destroyed My people, 
 Who turned not from their ways. 
 
 8 More are their widows in number 
 
 Than sand by the sea. 
 I brought upon them**** 
 
 A spoiler at noonday; 
 Upon her I sent full suddenly 
 
 Anguish and terror. 
 
 9 She that bare seven doth languish, 
 
 She breathes out her soul; 
 Her sun has gone down while yet it was day: 
 
 She is shamed and dismayed ! 
 And their remnant I give to the sword 
 
 Before their foes.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH 
 
 ^ I! ^HE circumstances of Jeremiah's release after the 
 Ji capture of Jerusalem are twice recorded in the 
 book. In ch. xxxix. 14 we are told that one of the first 
 acts of the Chaldean officers when they took formal 
 possession of the city was to send for the prophet from 
 the court of the guard, and hand him over to the care 
 of Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, who had already been 
 appointed governor of the province of Judah 1 . But 
 according to ch. xl. 15, Jeremiah had been marked 
 for deportation to Babylon, and had reached Ramah in 
 fetters, before Nebuzaradan had his attention called to 
 his exceptional position among the captives. The captain 
 of the guard immediately set him free, and gave him 
 his choice either to proceed to Babylon under his own 
 personal protection, or to join the newly appointed 
 governor Gedaliah at Mizpah. Jeremiah chose the 
 latter alternative, and threw in his lot with the im- 
 poverished remnant that remained in the land. 
 
 This second narrative is generally discredited by 
 critics as a late legend, throwing an exaggerated emphasis 
 on the deference shown to Jeremiah by the Chaldean 
 authorities (cf. the spurious verses xxxix. n, 12). It 
 must be owned that it lays itself open to suspicion by 
 the unskilful and indirect manner in which the facts are 
 
 1 The statement of w . 1 1 f., that Nebuchadnezzar had specially 
 charged them to see to his safety, is undoubtedly apocryphal. The whole 
 section vv. 413 is a late addition to the Hebrew text, not found in the 
 LXX, in which v. 14 immediately follows v. 3, which in its turn is the 
 continuation of the last clause of ch. xxxviii; xxxix. I, 2, although found 
 in the LXX, being clearly an interpolation from the book of Kings.
 
 CH. xiv] WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH 273 
 
 presented. It is introduced as a word of Yahwe to 
 Jeremiah (v. i); but it really resolves itself into a 
 sermon by Nebuzaradan, in which the heathen general 
 instructs the prophet in the principles which the latter 
 had inculcated all his life. The situation in which the 
 speech was delivered is only indicated casually, as if it 
 were well known, in subordinate clauses of the super- 
 scription; and the main transaction is left to be inferred 
 from the speech itself. All this detracts seriously from 
 the historicity of the narrative, and compels us to 
 recognise an element of legendary embellishment in its 
 composition. Yet there are good grounds for thinking 
 that it rests on a sound tradition and preserves the 
 actual circumstances of Jeremiah's liberation more 
 faithfully that the abridged statement of xxxix. 14. 
 Can we suppose that Jeremiah was so well known to 
 the Babylonian commissioners that their first concern 
 on taking over control of the city was to set him at 
 liberty ? Was Gedaliah in a position to act as Jeremiah's 
 protector at so early a stage in the settlement? It is 
 conceivable, no doubt, that he had been chosen as the 
 future governor of Judah before the termination of the 
 siege, and was ready at once to take up the duties of 
 his office. But from 2 Kings xxv. 22 we learn that his 
 appointment was one of the administrative acts per- 
 formed by Nebuzaradan, who did not arrive on the 
 scene till a month after the fall of Jerusalem r . Taking 
 this view of the incident the second account of Jeremiah's 
 discharge is perfectly intelligible. At first he suffered 
 the common fate of an unknown citizen, and was 
 destined for transportation to Babylon. A considerable 
 time must have elapsed before Nebuzaradan could 
 complete his arrangements for the departure of the 
 
 1 He is not mentioned in xxxix. 3, and the mention of his name in 
 xxxix. 1 3 is due to the author of the interpolation m. 4-1 3, who was 
 aware from xl. 1-6 that Jeremiah owed his release to this official. 
 
 S.P.R. 18
 
 274 WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH [CH> 
 
 captives, whom he gradually assembled at Ramah. 
 Meanwhile Gedaliah would have made enquiries about 
 Jeremiah, and then applied for his release partly on the 
 ground of personal and family friendship, and partly 
 perhaps because he needed his support in the difficult 
 task that lay before him. Such a request, accompanied 
 by information about the prophet which could not fail 
 to commend him to the Babylonian government, could 
 not reasonably be refused, and Jeremiah was accordingly 
 set at liberty to go where he would 1 . 
 
 The brief episode of Gedaliah's governorship is so 
 closely bound up with the personal fortunes of Jeremiah 
 that it is necessary to dwell for a little upon its tragic 
 story. It was an experiment in local autonomy which 
 exhibits in a very favourable light the pacific tendency 
 of the Babylonian imperialism. It vindicated, when too 
 
 1 The attempts to harmonise the accounts, or to combine them in a 
 single narrative, seem to me unsuccessful. Mowinckel (Zur Komposition 
 des BucAes Jeremia [1914], p. 24) tries to establish a connexion by 
 omitting xl. i as a mistaken duplicate of xxxix. 1 5, the heading of the 
 oracle on Ebed-melech in vv. 1618, and reading xl. 2 as the con- 
 tinuation of xxxix. 14. But (i) Nebuzaradan was not in Jerusalem at 
 the time of xxxix. 3, 14; (2) in xxxix. 14 the other two officers had 
 already handed Jeremiah over to the care of Gedaliah, and it would 
 have been too late for a third official, even if he had been present, to 
 offer him a choice of two alternatives; and (3) the distinctive feature of 
 the narrative that the captive train had reached Ramah before Jere- 
 miah's fetters were struck off remains unexplained. It is hardly less 
 unsatisfying to suppose that in the temporary absence of Gedaliah at 
 Mizpah Jeremiah had been left behind and was carried off by an 
 official oversight. Duhm and others, who accept the first statement as 
 historical, are therefore fully justified in regarding xl. 1-5 as legendary, 
 and taking xl. 6 as the continuation of xxxix. 14 in its original form. 
 But it is better to recognise them as two variant traditions of the incident, 
 the second of which, in spite of its legendary setting, gives correct 
 details which have been suppressed in the first. The case is closely 
 parallel to the duplication of xxxvii. 1 1 ff. and xxxviii, and confirms 
 the view that two strands of tradition have been interwoven in the 
 biography of Jeremiah (see p. 258 n. above).
 
 xivj WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH 275 
 
 late, the soundness of Jeremiah's repeated counsels to 
 surrender the capital to the Chaldean armies. Even now, 
 in spite of the severity with which he had crushed and 
 punished the rebellion, Nebuchadnezzar had no thought 
 of exterminating the Jewish people. There are not 
 sufficient data on which to base a reliable estimate of 
 the extent to which the country was depopulated; but 
 it is clear from many indications that the great majority 
 of the inhabitants were left in the land. They are 
 described as 'the poorest of the land,' but the state- 
 ments of the book of Kings are consistent with the 
 assumption that they were the bulk of the Judean 
 peasantry, apart from the citizens of Jerusalem and the 
 well-to-do landowners throughout the kingdom. Over 
 this not inconsiderable population Nebuchadnezzar set 
 a governor of their own race, a member of one of their 
 noblest families; and into his hands he committed the 
 task of restoring order and confidence in the still 
 unpacified province. 
 
 In Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the Babylonians 
 appear to have found a man of outstanding character 
 and ability, thoroughly sympathetic with their policy, 
 and capable, if he had lived longer, of working it out 
 successfully. He may have been one of those who had 
 taken Jeremiah's advice, and gone over to the Chaldeans 
 before or during the siege. At all events he was on the 
 side of Jeremiah against the pseudo-patriotic faction 
 which had forced the king into the struggle with 
 Babylon. He was convinced like the prophet that the 
 one hope of national regeneration lay in submission to 
 the irresistible yet lenient sway of the king of Babylon, 
 in whose clemency he had unbounded confidence. And 
 he showed the courage of his convictions by his willing- 
 ness to undertake the arduous and dangerous duty of 
 building up a new commonwealth out of the wreck 
 which war had made of the kingdom of Judah. He 
 
 1 8 2
 
 276 WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH [CH. 
 
 fixed his residence at Mizpah, commonly identified 
 with the elevated site of Neby Samwil^ in the territory 
 of Benjamin, about five miles north-west of Jerusalem 1 ; 
 from whence as a centre he hoped gradually to con- 
 solidate his rule over the unsettled districts. There were 
 still scattered posts or commandos throughout the 
 province -francs tireurs, who had taken the field against 
 the Chaldean invaders, and had never been hunted 
 down. As the leaders of these bands came in one by one 
 and tendered their allegiance, Gedaliah treated them 
 with a frank magnanimity which completely won their 
 confidence. Instead of arresting or disarming them, he 
 sent them back to the villages they had occupied, 
 urging them to settle down to the peaceful occupation 
 of harvesting the produce of the vineyards and orchards 
 as the season of the year demanded. And, as if to assure 
 the new community of Yahwe's benediction on their 
 enterprise, the fruit-harvest of that autumn was unusually 
 abundant. In Mizpah itself 'they gathered wine and 
 summer-fruits very much'; and the fertile valleys and 
 terraced hillslopes rang with joyous vintage music which 
 celebrated the return of peace and prosperity to the 
 war-stricken land. 
 
 In another chapter 2 we shall examine a series of 
 poems which, if they be rightly dated from this period, 
 show that Jeremiah not only shared the new-born hope 
 of the little community, but saw in it a foretaste of the 
 perfect felicity of the Messianic age. The judgment 
 which for forty years he had predicted, the shadow of 
 which had hung over him like a cloud, darkening all 
 his horizon with the presage of its illimitable possi- 
 bilities of woe, and quenching his sympathy with 
 
 1 Another suggested identification is with Tell-en-Nasbe, seven miles 
 due north from Jerusalem, commanding from a considerable altitude 
 the road to Nablus (see Schmidt, op. cit. p. 366, who refers to 
 Palastina-Jahrbuch, vi, 46 ff.). 2 Chap. xvi.
 
 xiv] WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH 277 
 
 common human joys, had taken place. The corrupt 
 social and political organism which had sheltered so 
 many evils and fostered so many false ideas, was a thing 
 of the past; the Temple and the holy city were in ruins; 
 the godless leaders of the people, his opponents and 
 persecutors, had gone to death or captivity; the last 
 remnant of Hebrew nationality had been swept away. 
 To what could he now look forward ? Was he too little 
 of an optimist to expect that the millennium had 
 dawned with the settlement under Babylonian auspices 
 of a new Jewish community on native soil ? He may 
 have been. Yet we know that as regards the ultimate 
 purpose of God he certainly was no pessimist. His faith 
 in the future of religion and a future kingdom of God 
 was deeply rooted in his experience, and had found 
 explicit utterance in his teaching. Moreover, as we 
 learn from ch. xxxii. 615, he had already formed the 
 conviction that an ordered commonwealth would arise 
 at no distant date around Jerusalem. The Chaldean 
 dominion would not last for ever, and after it had 
 passed away a new Israel would inherit the land of 
 promise, when each man would sit under his own vine 
 and fig-tree enjoying the reward of his labour. Even if 
 the precise eschatological value of the settlement under 
 Gedaliah be doubtful, Jeremiah unquestionably believed 
 that the blessing of Yahwe rested upon it 1 , and that it 
 contained the promise of permanent good. Putting all 
 these things together, it is reasonable to suppose that 
 he recognised in this chastened and humble remnant, 
 emerging from the convulsions of the national dis- 
 solution, the nucleus of the new people of God in which 
 religion would find its perfect embodiment. 
 
 It is a mistake at all events to regard Jeremiah's 
 decision to share the fortunes of Gedaliah as the choice 
 of a worn-out old man whose work was over, and to 
 1 Ch. xlii. 10-12.
 
 278 WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH [CH. 
 
 whom it was a matter of indifference whether he spent 
 the fag-end of his life in Babylon or in Canaan. A time 
 had been when he held that the hope of the future lay 
 with those who had gone into captivity; but the fall of 
 Jerusalem had opened up a new prospect and given a 
 new direction to his thought and activity. The advice 
 which he had formerly sent to the exiles on the Eu- 
 phrates to 'build houses and dwell in them, to plant 
 orchards and eat their fruit,' in loyal submission to the 
 heathen power with which their interests were identified 
 could now be followed in Palestine itself. It was in 
 fact the precise policy which Gedaliah had adopted and 
 urged on his people. For once in the history of Israel 
 the prophetic and the secular authority were in com- 
 plete accord, and the counsel of peace was between 
 them both I . The fact is interesting as an indication that 
 there was no such radical opposition between Jeremiah 
 and the better members of the Deuteronomic school 
 as many writers have supposed 2 . Their one difference 
 in principle had been on the question of the salvability 
 of the Jewish State (pp. iy6f.); and when that issue 
 was decided in Jeremiah's favour by the capture of 
 Jerusalem all that was good in the movement would 
 naturally rally to the prophet whose reading of the 
 religious situation had been vindicated by the march 
 of events. Of this rapprochement we seem to have an 
 instance in the partnership of Gedaliah and Jeremiah. 
 The new governor was by family tradition a Deutero- 
 nomist, but one who had never broken with Jeremiah. 
 There were doubtless many reasons why he might have 
 desired the presence of the venerable prophet with him 
 at Mizpah when he undertook to organise the new 
 settlement, though we can hardly believe that Jeremiah 
 would have consented unless he had been in sympathy 
 with his aims. The prophet's thoughts may have dwelt 
 1 Zech. vi. 13. 2 See Chap, vi above.
 
 xiv] WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH 279 
 
 more on the ideal future while the statesman's were 
 engrossed with the practical problems of the hour; but 
 that was a difference which would only make their 
 co-operation more stimulating and fruitful. Jeremiah 
 had felt himself called from the first to pluck up and 
 break down and destroy, but also to build and to plant : 
 the negative side of his commission had been dis- 
 charged, at what agonising cost to his sensibilities we 
 have in some measure realised; he could now devote 
 himself to the more congenial task of strengthening 
 the hands of a true patriot and servant of God in build- 
 ing up a new Israel on the ruins of the old. 
 
 We may well imagine, therefore, that these short 
 autumn weeks spent at Mizpah were the happiest 
 period of Jeremiah's long life. Tradition has pictured 
 him sitting disconsolate among the ruins of Jerusalem, 
 pouring forth his grief in the plaintive and haunting 
 strains of the Hebrew elegy. But although the second 
 and fourth poems of the book of Lamentations present 
 every mark of having been composed by an eye-witness 
 of the Chaldean overthrow of Jerusalem, the ascription 
 of them to Jeremiah rests on no better foundation than 
 a heading in the Greek version. Internal evidence is 
 almost decisive against the view that he was the author. 
 The anonymous poet who wrote these verses has a 
 feeling for the calamity of his people perhaps as sensitive 
 as Jeremiah's, but his poetic genius is inferior and his 
 religious temper of a different cast. He adopts the 
 artificial form of the acrostic, and elaborates his lines 
 with a nicety of which Jeremiah shows no trace. Above 
 all, he writes from the viewpoint of those on whom the 
 catastrophe had come as a bolt from the blue, to whom 
 it was an unexpected and incredible thing that Yahwe 
 should allow His holy place to be profaned by a foreign 
 foe. Far different were the thoughts that at this time 
 occupied the mind of our prophet. He was not at
 
 280 WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH [CH. 
 
 Jerusalem but at Mizpah, amid rural scenes like those 
 in which his boyhood had been spent, at the centre of 
 a cheerful and industrious community, intent on repair- 
 ing the ravages of war and laying the foundations of a 
 new civil order. And the poems which may be most 
 plausibly assigned to this part of his career are no dirges 
 over the irretrievable past. They are attuned, as we 
 shall find, to the festive songs of the husbandmen as 
 they gathered in the precious fruits of the season which 
 were to Jeremiah the earnest of higher blessings in 
 store for the redeemed people of Yahwe. 
 
 All this fair promise of returning prosperity was 
 blighted in an evil hour by the treacherous murder of 
 Gedaliah, a deed so foul and senseless that many have 
 thought it could only have been conceived in the brain 
 of a lunatic. The narrative, however, suggests motives 
 probable in themselves which bar the plea of insanity 
 on behalf of the perpetrator. Among the field-com- 
 mandants who came to make their peace with the 
 governor the first named is a certain Ishmael, the son 
 of Nethaniah l y a prince of the blood, who was known 
 or suspected by his companions of being in treasonable 
 correspondence with the king of the Ammonites. When 
 these men warned Gedaliah that Ishmael had been 
 bribed to assassinate him, the brave young nobleman 
 refused to believe them; and when Johanan ben-Kareah 
 proposed to 'mak* siccar' by secretly doing away with 
 the traitor, the governor peremptorily forbade him, 
 telling him that his suspicions did injustice to Ishmael. 
 There is no reason to doubt that Johanan's information 
 was correct. Baalis of Ammon had an obvious interest 
 in preventing the rise of a new Jewish state between 
 him and the Mediterranean, and may also have hoped 
 
 1 The narrative would read more intelligibly if we suppose that the 
 name is inserted in ch. xl. 8 by mistake, and that the first appearance of 
 Ishmael was that recorded in xli. I.
 
 xiv] WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH 281 
 
 to extend his dominion to the west of the Jordan. He 
 dared not openly defy Nebuchadnezzar by making an 
 attack on the small Chaldean garrison stationed at 
 Mizpah; but if he could bring about the death of his 
 deputy by the hand of a Judean he might hope that 
 the vengeance of the supreme power would be turned 
 against the Jewish remnant, and that out of the con- 
 fusion something might accrue to his advantage. In 
 Ishmael he found an instrument fit for his purpose. The 
 hot-headed fanatic, with royal blood in his veins, 
 resented the humiliation inflicted on his family by the 
 elevation of a commoner as head of the administration, 
 and was ready 'to do contrived murder' in his mad 
 thirst for revenge. In due time he arrived at Mizpah 
 with a band of ten desperadoes, and was hospitably 
 entertained by the too confiding governor. In the night 
 the assassins rose and carried out their bloody design. 
 Gedaliah and his retinue perished in a general massacre 
 of the resident Jews and Chaldeans, in which, however, 
 the royal princesses and some others were spared and 
 made prisoners. A still more ghastly and revolting 
 tragedy was enacted on the following day, when eighty 
 unsuspecting pilgrims going up to the ruined sanctuary 
 at Jerusalem were lured out of their way and butchered 
 in the streets of Mizpah, with the exception of ten 
 men who saved their lives by disclosing secret stores of 
 corn and fruit concealed in caves and cisterns in the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 The outrage was promptly, but only partially, 
 avenged. The guerilla chiefs who had been won over 
 by the generosity of Gedaliah, with Johanan ben-Kareah 
 at their head, swiftly collected their forces, and inter- 
 cepted the flight of Ishmael at Gibeon, where the 
 cowardly ruffian abandoned his captives and his booty, 
 and made his escape with eight of his ten accomplices 
 across the Jordan to Ammon.
 
 282 WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH [CH. 
 
 But the mischief done by the ruthless act was irre- 
 parable, or seemed to be so to Johanan and his fellow 
 soldiers, on whom the leadership of the remnant now 
 devolved. They felt very naturally that their standing 
 with the suzerain power had been hopelessly com- 
 promised by a crime which they could not prevent, 
 but from which they must find it difficult to clear 
 themselves. If they had kept their heads and stayed on 
 in the country, trusting to an impartial investigation 
 by Nebuchadnezzar's government, all might yet have 
 been well. But their strength had perhaps been ex- 
 hausted by years of unsuccessful fighting, and this 
 crowning disaster plunged them in despair. They turned 
 longing eyes to the peace and security and plenty of 
 Egypt, where they would 'see no war, nor hear the 
 sound of the trumpet, nor have hunger of bread' (xlii. 
 14). Indeed, from the present form of the history, they 
 would seem to have been on the way thither before they 
 bethought themselves of consulting Jeremiah on their 
 project. It is noteworthy, however, that in the narrative, 
 so far as we have followed it, Jeremiah is never once 
 mentioned. This suggests that we have here again an 
 overlapping of two documents, of which the first 
 (closing with ch. xli) gives a condensed account of the 
 migration to Egypt, while the second (ch. xlii) relates 
 in amplified detail Jeremiah's unavailing opposition to 
 the resolve of the military leaders. But since that incident 
 marks the beginning of a new phase of the prophet's 
 attitude to his countrymen, we may pause at this point 
 to discuss some important elements of his theology 
 which seem to have come to maturity and expression 
 during the later years of his ministry. 
 
 One possible objection to the view taken in this 
 chapter may, however, be noticed before we leave the 
 subject. The picture drawn above of the state of things 
 in Palestine after the deportation is in strong contrast to
 
 xivj WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH 283 
 
 another picture from the contemporary pen of Ezekiel, 
 which apparently is based on information obtained 
 from a survivor of the national overthrow (Ezek. xxxiii. 
 21, 2426). Ezekiel describes the men left in possession 
 of the desolate land of Israel as men who 'stand upon 
 their sword,' who practise idolatry, ceremonial im- 
 purity, immorality and bloodshed, and who justify their 
 claim to be the legitimate heirs of Canaan by a strange 
 appeal to the remote history of their race. 'Abraham 
 was one,' they defiantly argued, 'and yet he inherited 
 the land; but we are many; to us the land is given for 
 a possession.' That is to say, the smallness of their 
 numbers as compared with the old population of the 
 country was no argument against the validity of their 
 title to the inheritance of Canaan : they were still many 
 in comparison with the solitary patriarch whose seed 
 had so wonderfully multiplied. Now, if this refers to 
 the two months of Gedaliah's rule it certainly contra- 
 dicts the impression which the record in the book of 
 Jeremiah makes on the mind; and it represents a state 
 of affairs in which we can hardly suppose that the 
 prophet himself would have felt at home. And such a 
 difference of judgment between two prophets would be 
 no unprecedented phenomenon: it is of a piece with 
 the opposite estimates of the Exodus period formed by 
 Hosea and Jeremiah on the one hand, and by Ezekiel 
 on the other. There were doubtless facts of the situation 
 which would justify either estimate : all depends on the 
 point of view. It is possible that Jeremiah might have 
 seen in the varied life around him the promise of a 
 bright future for Israel, while Ezekiel from a distance 
 knew only of the dark blots on the picture, which must 
 draw down further judgments on the sinful remnant. 
 It is a question, however, whether the two descriptions 
 correspond in point of time. Since the death of Gedaliah 
 took place in the seventh month (Sept.-Oct.), and the
 
 284 WITH THE REMNANT AT MIZPAH [CH. xiv 
 
 arrival of the 'fugitive' in Babylonia is dated in the 
 tenth month (Dec.- Jan.) of the same year, there was 
 ample time for that somewhat shadowy personage to 
 have gained a knowledge of later conditions in Palestine 
 before he set out for Babylon. We know nothing of 
 what actually happened there after the departure of 
 Johanan and his company to Egypt; but we read in 
 Jer. Hi. 30 of a further deportation of Jewish captives 
 five years after the conquest of Jerusalem; and it is 
 permissible to suppose that in the interval the province 
 had been a scene of anarchy and rebellion which had to 
 be suppressed by a punitive expedition from Babylon. 
 In so far as Ezekiel's invective rests on an objective 
 acquaintance with the prevalent feeling in Judea, it is 
 in this period of disorder that we must look for the 
 men of blood and violence whose proud language had 
 stirred the indignation of the prophet. In any case it is 
 impossible to believe that such language expresses the 
 tone of the settlement at Mizpah; and consequently 
 there is nothing in Ezekiel's denunciation that forbids 
 us to hold that Jeremiah cherished the most sanguine 
 hopes of a national restoration as he contemplated the 
 good work begun under the peaceable and enlightened 
 rule of Gedaliah.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: 
 I. THE LETTER TO THE EXILES 
 
 ^ II ^HE last three chapters have been mainly historical; 
 JL and they have brought us to a point beyond which 
 it is impossible to form a clear picture either of the 
 outward circumstances of Jeremiah's life, or of the 
 inner movement of his thought. With the descent into 
 Egypt, it looks as if the cloud of despondency had 
 settled permanently on the prophet's spirit, blotting out 
 every gleam of hope that had ever brightened his sky. 
 That impression may of course be quite misleading. 
 The discourses contained in chs. xliii and xliv deal only 
 with the fate of the Jewish colonies in Egypt; and their 
 spiritual future was in Jeremiah's view as black as it 
 could possibly be painted. It does not necessarily follow 
 that he saw no light in any part of the horizon, or that 
 his private reflexions were as gloomy as his public 
 utterances. Nevertheless the fact remains that hence- 
 forward no word of hope from his lips is recorded, and 
 it is difficult to think that the evening of his life was as 
 a time of clear shining after rain. It is probable that he 
 did not long survive his forcible removal to Egypt; and 
 before we pass on to that closing chapter of his career 
 we have to consider at some length an aspect of his 
 message which comes to light in some of his later 
 prophecies, viz. his eschatological conceptions, or the 
 forms under which he was led to contemplate the final 
 expression of religion as fellowship between God and 
 man. 
 
 Now, in one sense Jeremiah may be said to be the
 
 286 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 least eschatological of the prophets. Not that he is less 
 concerned than others with the future of religion or of 
 Israel. But his vision is free from the cataclysmic 
 element which enters so largely into eschatological 
 representations. There is abundant poetic imagination 
 in his prophecies, but hardly a trace of apocalyptic 
 imagery. He does not deal in lurid pictures of praeter- 
 natural gloom and terror 'As when some great painter 
 dips His brush in hues of earthquake and eclipse.' It 
 is a significant fact that the standing prophetic phrase 
 'Day of Yahwe' does not occur in any genuine utterance 
 of Jeremiah. The Day of Yahwe as described by Isaiah 
 (ch. ii) or Zephaniah (ch. i; cf. Isa. xiii, Micah i, ii) is 
 a revelation of the presence of Yahwe in a great physical 
 and political catastrophe, in which the order of nature 
 is broken up, the nations are convulsed, and ' the whole 
 aeon sinks in blood.' To say that such descriptions are 
 purely figurative, and express nothing more than the 
 onslaught of a formidable military power, does not 
 seem to me to exhaust their meaning; but even on that 
 view the absence of such images from the pages of 
 Jeremiah would be a distinguishing feature of his 
 eschatology. It is only in his youthful period, when he 
 was shaken by the terrors of the Scythian invasion, that 
 some writers have thought that an approach to apoca- 
 lyptic can be detected, and that opinion is very doubtful. 
 As life went on, and his historical vision became more 
 clear and experienced, his view of the judicial inter- 
 vention of Yahwe resolves itself into an anticipation of 
 the overthrow of the Jewish State by the armies of 
 Nebuchadnezzar. And the same note of sober realism 
 characterises his conception of the era of salvation. Just 
 as the eschatology of judgment moves on the plane of 
 history and the providential ordering of events, so the 
 eschatology of salvation unfolds itself in idyllic pictures 
 of the future people of God under conditions which are
 
 xv] I. THE LETTER TO THE EXILES 287 
 
 entirely natural, including no miraculous transforma- 
 tion of the physical environment such as we meet in 
 the prophecies of Hosea and Isaiah and (if the epilogue 
 to his book were genuine) even of Amos. 
 
 The teaching of Jeremiah on the consummation of 
 the divine purpose of redemption may be considered 
 under four heads: I. The emancipation of religion from 
 the national institutions of Israel. II. The restoration 
 of the Hebrew commonwealth on the soil of Palestine. 
 III. His negative attitude towards the expectation of a 
 personal Messiah. IV. The formation of a New 
 Covenant between Yahwe and His people. The first 
 of these is the subject of the present chapter. 
 
 I 
 
 That the essential religion of Yahwe is independent 
 of the privileges of Jewish citizenship, and is even 
 consistent with loyalty to a foreign power, is the theme 
 of Jeremiah's memorable letter to the recent exiles in 
 Babylonia which is preserved in ch. xxix. This docu- 
 ment, whose text appears to have been considerably 
 altered and expanded in the course of transmission, may 
 have read originally somewhat as follows: 
 
 5 Build houses and dwell therein; 
 
 Plant orchards and eat their fruit; 
 
 6 Take you wives and beget children, 
 
 That you may wax and not diminish. 
 
 7 And seek the good of the land 
 
 To which I have led you captive; 
 And pray for it to Yahwe, 
 
 For with its welfare is yours bound up. 
 
 11 For well do I know the thoughts 
 
 That I think concerning you 
 Thoughts of weal and not of ill 
 To give you a future of hope.
 
 288 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 12 When you pray to Me I will hear; 
 
 When you seek Me you shall find: 
 *3 When you seek with all your heart, 
 X 4 1 shall be found of you, saith Yahwe 1 . 
 
 In order to understand this pronouncement aright 
 we must of course have regard to the circumstances 
 which called it forth. Jeremiah's immediate purpose 
 was to allay a dangerous revolutionary agitation which 
 had sprung up among the Exiles in sympathy with a 
 project of rebellion which was being fomented in 
 Jerusalem z . Since the movement was largely inspired 
 by religious fanaticism, the prophet seeks to counteract 
 it by a finer and more spiritual conception of what true 
 religion is. He counsels hope and patience, founded on 
 faith in the purpose of grace which he knows to be in 
 the heart of God towards His banished ones. He urges 
 them to take long views, and not to murmur against 
 the slow working of providence, saying that it is 'a long 
 drawn-out affair' (xxix. 28), but to lead sober contented 
 and godly lives under the protection of a foreign rule. 
 Hence the letter, so far as it bears on our present 
 subject, falls into two equal parts: The first (vv. 5-7) 
 is an injunction to behave as peaceable subjects of the 
 Babylonian Empire, identifying their material interests 
 with its prosperity, and counting it a religious duty to 
 seek its good. The second (vv. 1 1-14) is an assurance 
 
 1 There is a prose appendix which reads (vv. 1 5 ff.) : 
 'As for your saying, "Yahwe has raised us up prophets in Babylon ": 
 thus saith Yahwe concerning Ah'ab ben-Koliyah and Zedekiah ben- 
 Ma'aseyah, "Behold I will deliver them into the hand of the king of 
 Babylon and he will slay them before your eyes. And a curse will be 
 derived from them by all the Jewish Exiles in Babylon, in these words : 
 'Yahwe make thee like Zedekiah and Ah'ab whom the king of Babylon 
 roasted in the fire.'" Because they have wrought scandalous folly in 
 Israel, and have committed adultery with their neighbours' wives.... 
 And I have known it and bear witness': 'tis Yahwe's oracle. 
 * See pp. 253 f. above.
 
 xv] I. THE LETTER TO THE EXILES 289 
 
 that God is as near to the devout Israelite in Babylon 
 as in Jerusalem, that they have still a share in His 
 gracious purpose, and that at all times they have access 
 to Him through prayer. The complete emancipation 
 of the spirit of religion from the forms of national 
 worship could not be more clearly enunciated than in 
 this twofold exhortation to expatriated Jews living in a 
 foreign land. It is the idea expressed in the second part 
 of the letter which is of importance for Jeremiah's 
 conception of the future of religion. There are two 
 questions which may be asked, and must be carefully 
 considered. 
 
 i. In the first place we have to inquire whether the 
 principle here enunciated is new to prophecy, and if so 
 how far it is the outcome of Jeremiah's personal experi- 
 ence. That prayer can be offered in any place seems at 
 first sight an obvious dictate of natural religion; and 
 there is clear evidence that even in the preprophetic 
 period men's minds had grasped this truth in Israel. 
 In the patriarchal narratives of Genesis there are 
 examples of prayer answered, and a relatively complete 
 religious life lived, at a distance from the Holy Land 
 and its sanctuaries. Elijah in a Phoenician town wrought 
 a miracle by the power of prayer to Yah we (i Kings 
 xvii. 20 ff.). It is not fair to set down such cases to the 
 naive inconsequence of a popular theology which did 
 not reflect on the effect which a change of venue (so to 
 speak) must have in the worship of a national deity. 
 Nor is it quite convincing to say that what was con- 
 ceived possible to heroes of religion like the patriarchs 
 and Elijah was beyond the reach of the ordinary 
 Israelite. We must admit that the idea of prayer to 
 Yahwe in a foreign land presented no difficulty to the 
 faith of pre-Exilic Israelites. The pagan maxim, cujus 
 regio ejus religio (in spite of an utterance like i Sam. 
 xxvi. 1 9), was no longer an accepted axiom of practical 
 
 S.P.F. I
 
 290 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 religion. If Jeremiah's message involved no more than 
 this it could scarcely be held to mark an advance in the 
 apprehension of the spirituality and universality of true 
 religion. 
 
 But we must observe that in Jeremiah's pronounce- 
 ment the principle is applied to a wholly unprecedented 
 situation. The men whom he addresses were congratu- 
 lating themselves that Yahwe had raised them up 
 prophets in Babylon. It was evidently a surprise to them 
 that prophetic inspiration was not limited to the land 
 of Israel, nor exclusively bound up with the political 
 institutions on the preservation and recovery of which 
 all their hopes were concentrated. In an entirely wrong 
 way they imagined they were experiencing the presence 
 of Yahwe in their exiled condition. Jeremiah seeks to 
 convey to them a conception of the true way to cultivate 
 the presence of Yahwe. His premiss is not that as 
 individuals or as a community under an alien sky they 
 may still retain some shreds of their religious heritage; 
 but that in the privilege of prayer the whole reality of 
 religion is theirs: that in the impending destruction of 
 all the externals of their nationality the Temple, the 
 sacrifices, the Holy City God still lives, and having 
 intercourse with Him they have all. Prayer is not 
 merely petition for special material blessings; it is the 
 search for God an earnest and whole-hearted search: 
 'When ye seek Af<?, ye shall find me'; 'when ye seek 
 for Me with all your heart, I will reveal Myself to you.' 
 Where God is thus revealed in experience, there all the 
 powers of religion are, and nothing essential can be 
 added thereto. That is the core of Jeremiah's teaching 
 in this passage; and it is by no means clear that any 
 previous prophet or thinker could have given it as well 
 as he. 
 
 How far this doctrine rose above the prevailing 
 beliefs of the age is best seen from a comparison with
 
 xv] I. THE LETTER TO THE EXILES 291 
 
 the ideal of the Deuteronomic reformers. The contrast 
 has been so well brought out by Dr Welch, in the 
 closing paragraphs of his lectures on The Religion of 
 Israel under the Kingdom^ that I might almost content 
 myself with a reference to his lucid and convincing 
 statement (pp. 231241). He shows that the Deutero- 
 nomists had failed to grasp the fundamental prophetic 
 conception of a divine intervention to sweep away the 
 national life of Israel; it 'had no meaning for them, 
 save as a threat or warning to hasten their work' (p. 
 234). They could conceive of nothing higher than a 
 national religion; hence their supreme aim was to 
 preserve the State as the indispensable basis of religion. 
 They saw the need for a radical purification of religious 
 institutions from the abuses which had perverted them 
 from their true functions; but these institutions had 
 nevertheless a final value in the eyes of these men as 
 'forms of Israel's worship,' without which religion as 
 they conceived it would cease to be. From their point 
 of view, therefore, the State, which maintained these 
 institutions, was essential to the continuance of religion; 
 and a divorce between the religion of Israel and its 
 political organisation was unthinkable 1 . Now the 
 Deuteronomic party contained some of the best elements 
 in the life of the time. It had assimilated, as far as 
 average minds were able, the teaching of the prophets, 
 and sought to legislate in accordance with it. We found 
 reason to believe that Jeremiah sympathised largely 
 
 * All this, of course, is asserted only of the original promoters of the 
 reformation. Their successors of the same school of thought not only 
 contemplated but actually experienced the dissolution of the State, and 
 it is to their hands that we must attribute most of the anticipations of 
 exile and restoration which are found in the introductory and concluding 
 discourses of the book. But while these men learned that the State could 
 not be saved by a reform of its public religion, it is clear that none of 
 them entertained the idea that religion could exist except under the 
 forms of a revived Jewish nationality. 
 
 192
 
 292 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 with their aim, and went some distance with them. 
 But we saw also that he was fundamentally of a different 
 spirit from theirs, and became more and more con- 
 scious of the difference as the results of the movement 
 came to light. Nothing reveals the gulf that separated 
 them more clearly than the principles laid down in the 
 letter to the Exiles. 
 
 The question now is whether Jeremiah, in opposition 
 to the Deuteronomists, represents the common stand- 
 point of the prophets with regard to the connexion 
 between religion and the State, or whether he goes 
 beyond it. Dr Welch holds that all the prophets had 
 contemplated a reconstitution of religion on a purely 
 humanistic basis to the exclusion of the claims of 
 Israelitish nationality. It appears to me that while this 
 principle is latent in the prophetic theology no prophet 
 had explicitly carried it to its logical conclusion before 
 Jeremiah; and indeed we shall see later that even 
 Jeremiah could not dispense with the idea of a restored 
 Israel as the religious community of the future. The 
 discussion would turn on the following points : (a) The 
 prophets were conscious of an immediate personal 
 relation to Yahwe, which must have been essentially 
 independent of local or political conditions. It might 
 seem impossible that they should have felt themselves 
 cut off from this direct converse with God if they had 
 been isolated from the life of Israel in a foreign land. 
 Yet on the other hand the prophet had his raison d'etre 
 in a call to deliver Yahwe's message to Israel; and it is 
 hazardous (especially in the light of Jeremiah's own 
 experience) to assume that he would have realised his 
 personal relation to God apart from his solidarity with 
 the nation to which he was commissioned. And even 
 if he attained this position for himself, we cannot infer 
 that he would have extended the same principle to all 
 Israelites, except in virtue of their membership in
 
 xv] I. THE LETTER TO THE EXILES 293 
 
 Yahwe's people. It is doubtful if even Jeremiah went 
 so far; and there is certainly no proof that any prophet 
 before him did so. 
 
 () Again, the prophets undoubtedly announced the 
 destruction of the State and therefore, it might be 
 argued, they must have held that religion is independent 
 of the State. It is unquestionable that they believed it 
 to be independent of the existing State. It does not 
 follow, however, that religion as conceived by them 
 was capable of expression in any form that did not 
 involve the continuance of the nation of Israel, purified 
 by judgment from the sin of the past, and renewed 
 in spirit in accordance with the righteous and holy 
 character of Yah we (cf. Isa. i. 26). 
 
 Nor (c) does the fact that in the teaching of the 
 prophets the conditions of communion with God are 
 exclusively ethical necessarily imply that these con- 
 ditions could be realised in the corporate life of any 
 other people than Israel, or in Israel without a political 
 organisation. What Yah we demands is morality; and 
 morality is universal; but the practice of universal 
 morality is not the whole of religion as the prophets 
 conceived it. 'The sin of Israel,' says Robertson Smith, 
 * is not merely that it has broken the laws of right and 
 wrong patent to all mankind, but that it has refused to 
 listen to these laws as they were personally explained to it 
 by the Judge Himself (op. cit. p. 138). Religion is the 
 gracious fellowship into which Yahwe has entered with 
 the people of His choice; and while social immorality 
 dissolves that relationship there is nothing to suggest 
 that a new religious fellowship could be established on 
 any other basis than God's revelation of Himself in the 
 life and history of that nation '. 
 
 1 The prophet with regard to whom the above statement might most 
 readily be questioned is Amos, whose thought of God as the sustainer 
 of the moral order of the universe might seem to exclude the idea of a
 
 294 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 (d) Another point at which the prophets loosened 
 the bond between religion and the State is their repudi- 
 ation of cultus as a means of intercourse with Yahwe 
 (see pp. 178183 above). A God who must be wor- 
 shipped in spirit and in truth is one who can be 
 worshipped equally in Samaria and in Jerusalem. But 
 once more it is uncertain whether the prophets drew 
 this inference from the principles of their teaching. 
 Hosea seems to regard the suspension of cultus during 
 the exile as equivalent to a moratorium in religion: 
 'Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat 
 unclean food in Assyria. They shall not pour out wine 
 to Yahwe, neither shall they arrange their sacrifices to 
 Him; their bread shall be to them as the bread of 
 mourners; for their bread shall be for their appetite: it 
 shall not come into the house of Yahwe. What will you 
 do in the day of solemn assembly, and in the day of the 
 feast of Yahwe?' (Hos. ix. 35). That is to say, the 
 whole life of the people will be secularised for want of 
 the religious observances by which it was sanctified, 
 and which were dependent on possession of the land 
 of Israel. And even if it be possible that the prophet is 
 here expressing the consciousness of the popular 
 religion, and not uttering his own conviction, still his 
 silence as to the possibility of maintaining fellowship 
 with Yahwe when national institutions are dissolved 
 is significant, and marks a distinct difference between 
 him and Jeremiah. 
 
 There seems therefore no reason to believe that any 
 
 particular relation between the deity and any one people. The negative 
 character of Amos's eschatology renders it impossible to speak with 
 confidence as to his view of the religion of the future: if the epilogue to 
 the book were genuine he looked for a restoration of Israel, and if it be 
 spurious we know nothing at all of the matter. But Amos is not indifferent 
 to the historic election of Israel by Yahwe, nor does he ignore the per- 
 sonal bond which gives morality a religious value : compare the quotation 
 from Robertson Smith given above.
 
 xv] I. THE LETTER TO THE EXILES 295 
 
 prophet occupied a purely universalistic standpoint, or 
 permanently dissociated religion from its national 
 embodiment in the Israelite commonwealth. 
 
 The conclusion to which these considerations point 
 would seem to be that while the Deuteronomists fell far 
 below the level of prophetic thought, inasmuch as they 
 made religion dependent on the existing political system, 
 Jeremiah rose above it in the explicit declaration that 
 religion is essentially independent of every political 
 bond, and exists in all its potency wherever devout 
 Israelites turn with all their hearts to seek their covenant 
 God. Though this is in itself an implicate of the pro- 
 phetic teaching, it may well be that a peculiar experi- 
 ence of personal religion such as Jeremiah passed 
 through was necessary to bring it out into clear con- 
 sciousness. It was because he himself had known the 
 power of prayer, and the answer to prayer, and so 
 discovered in himself the foundations of individual 
 piety, that he was able to assure his brethren that God 
 was as near to them in their exile as in Jerusalem, and 
 that even loyal submission to a heathen power was 
 consistent with the only homage which He demanded 
 the devotion of the heart which seeks its true good 
 in Him. 
 
 2. This brings us to the second question, which 
 may be more briefly disposed of. It is, whether the 
 programme of the letter to the Exiles is strictly eschato- 
 logical at all, or whether it be of the nature of an 
 Interimsethik, holding good only for the interval which 
 must elapse before the establishment of the new Israel 
 in its own land. It is possible, by eliminating v. 10 of 
 ch. xxix (as I have done in the translation, and for which 
 plausible reasons can be urged) to suppose that the 
 'future of hope* promised to the Exiles has nothing to 
 do with the prospect of a restoration to Palestine, but 
 refers to an indefinite future of blessedness in the land
 
 296 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 of their adoption. Such a view might seem more in 
 accordance with the implicit universalism of Jeremiah's 
 teaching than the narrower one which makes a revival 
 of nationalism the culmination of the prophet's hopes. 
 But here we come upon a deep-seated ambiguity in 
 Jeremiah's eschatological conceptions. His distinctive 
 contribution to religion lies in his discernment of the 
 permanent nature of religion as a spiritual relation 
 between the human soul and God; and this points 
 forward to a time when 'neither in this mountain nor 
 yet in Jerusalem shall men worship the Father,' but 
 the true worshippers 'shall worship Him in spirit and 
 in truth.' But though the letter to the Exiles marks a 
 clear advance along that line, it is more than doubtful 
 if it expresses Jeremiah's view of the final form of 
 religion. There are other elements in his outlook which 
 make it incredible that he ever discarded the principle 
 of nationalism, and extremely improbable that he 
 abandoned the hope of a national restoration. That 
 being so, there is little to be gained by ignoring it in 
 the interpretation of this passage. The reasonable con- 
 clusion is that what he impresses on the Exiles is simply 
 that while the Babylonian domination lasts, their religion 
 must be of the purely spiritual and denationalised 
 character here described, while he still cherishes the 
 expectation that the ultimate embodiment of religion 
 will be in a new Israel established before the eyes of the 
 world on its ancient soil. 
 
 It may be interesting, before we pass from this sub- 
 ject, to consider the probable effect of Jeremiah's letter 
 to the exiles on the permanent attitude of Judaism to 
 the Holy Land. The 'Zionist' controversy of our day 
 is no new phase of Jewish religion; it dates from the 
 Babylonian captivity. When, in much less than seventy 
 years, Babylon's power was broken, and the opportunity 
 presented itself to return to Palestine, large numbers
 
 xvj I. THE LETTER TO THE EXILES 297 
 
 of Jews, and these not the least devout, chose to remain 
 in their foreign home, while cherishing the most ardent 
 interest in the fortunes of those who had chosen to 
 return. Did they find in Jeremiah's missive the justifica- 
 tion of their attitude, and the charter of their liberalism? 
 We cannot say. The necessities of the case would 
 probably in any event have produced a theory to justify 
 what was a plain counsel of expediency; and the theory 
 actually evolved was not precisely that of Jeremiah; for 
 it proved necessary for the preservation of national 
 identity to insist on the outward badges of circumcision 
 and the observance of the sabbath, as the two distinc- 
 tively Jewish ordinances which could be retained in 
 exile. Nevertheless it is quite possible that historically 
 the influence of Jeremiah was a factor in initiating the 
 movement which played so large a part in leavening the 
 world with the principles of the religion of Israel.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION (continued}: 
 II. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL 
 
 ^ II ^HE Letter to the Exiles marks an advance towards 
 JL the conception of a universal religion, free from 
 local and politico-ecclesiastical conditions and based on 
 the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world. But it also reveals certain limitations which 
 seem to restrict the scope of its underlying principle. 
 For one thing, it does not discard the principle of 
 nationality. The prophet's advice is given to Jews as 
 such, and with all its catholicity of political outlook it 
 is an exhortation to the practice of a religious attitude 
 possible only to members of the chosen people. Again, 
 we have seen that, explicitly or implicitly, it contains 
 the promise of a fuller disclosure of Yahwe's purpose 
 of grace in the form of a national restoration. To the 
 further development of this idea in Jeremiah's prophecy 
 we now turn our attention. 
 
 Perhaps the first assurance of a speedy return of 
 material prosperity to the land of Canaan came to 
 Jeremiah in the inspiration which prompted him to 
 purchase a part of the family inheritance from a near 
 relative during the siege of Jerusalem. The instructive 
 incident is recorded in ch. xxxii. 6 ff. Jeremiah was then 
 a prisoner in the court of the guard; his public work 
 was suspended; he had leisure for reflexion while he 
 waited for the inevitable capture and destruction of the 
 city. We may imagine that he experienced something 
 of that strange sense of relief and rest which was said 
 to be felt by Russian revolutionists when they exchanged
 
 CH.XVI] II. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL 299 
 
 a life of feverish and dangerous activity for the quiet of 
 'some deep dungeon's earless cell.' His mind was set 
 free to look beyond the storm of judgment to the hope 
 of a brighter day. At all events, no sooner did his cousin 
 Hanamel make his appearance in the guarded court 
 than Jeremiah recalled to mind a mysterious premoni- 
 tion of the visit and of what he had come to say; and 
 when he stated his business the prophet 'knew that it 
 was a word of Yahwe.' Unhesitatingly, therefore, he 
 made the purchase, sealing it with all the legal formali- 
 ties, and adding this oracle: 'Thus saith Yahwe of 
 hosts, "Yet again shall houses, fields and vineyards be 
 bought in this land ! " ' It is a remarkably sober anticipa- 
 tion of the Golden Age! Nothing more than settled 
 order and security of property, such as might well be 
 looked for under a Babylonian administration. But it 
 is at least a solid foundation for an aspect of Jeremiah's 
 teaching which must be admitted to hang otherwise 
 somewhat in the air. 
 
 For the higher flights of his prophetic imagination 
 in this direction we are dependent on a series of poems 
 in chs. xxx and xxxi, which chapters with the addenda 
 in xxxii and xxxiii are almost the only bright pages in 
 the book of Jeremiah. The analysis of these chapters is 
 beset by formidable critical difficulties. They are said 
 to form a 'book' containing all the words which Yahwe 
 spoke to the prophet, and which he was commanded to 
 write because Yahwe was about to ' restore the captivity 
 of His people Israel and Judah,' and bring them back 
 to the land which He gave to their fathers (xxx. 2, 3). 
 Now it is quite conceivable that Jeremiah might have 
 written such a Book of Consolation for the encourage- 
 ment of true Israelites during the dreary years of their 
 banishment; just as in the reign of Jehoiakim he had 
 written a Book of Doom containing all the words he 
 had uttered against Israel and Judah (xxxvi. 2). But it
 
 300 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 is not credible that he wrote this book in the form in 
 which we now have it. There is no room for doubt that 
 its final compilation is the work of an exilic or post- 
 exilic author. The only question is whether we can 
 distinguish a nucleus of prophecies actually uttered by 
 Jeremiah. On that point scholars have been much 
 divided in opinion, although there is a growing dis- 
 position to recognise a genuine element at least in ch. 
 xxxi. It will be sufficient for our main purpose to 
 examine a few selected passages, the authenticity of 
 which is acknowledged by the majority of recent com- 
 mentators *. 
 
 (i) xxxi. 2-6 
 The Renewal of Yahwis Loving-kindness 
 
 2 The people found grace in the desert 
 
 A people escaped from the sword. 
 While Israel marched to his rest, 
 3 From afar did Yahwe appear. 
 'With a love from of old I love thee; 
 Therefore in kindness I draw thee.' 
 
 4 Once more I will build thee securely, 
 
 O virgin of Israel ! 
 
 Once more thou'lt come forth with thy tabrets 
 And dance with glee ! . 
 
 5 Once more thou shalt cover with vineyards 
 
 Samaria's hills ! 
 
 6 Yea, there comes a day 
 When watchers call 
 On Ephraim's hills: 
 * Let us rise and go up to Zion 
 To Yahwe our God ! ' 
 
 1 Giesebrecht, Duhm, Cornill, Erbt, Peake, Schmidt.
 
 xvi] II. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL 301 
 
 (2) xxxi. 15, 1 6 
 The Weeping of Rachel 
 
 1 5 Hark! In Ramah is heard lamentation 
 
 Bitterest weeping! 
 'Tis Rachel o'er her children weeping, 
 
 Refusing comfort ! 
 l6 (Thussaith Yahwe): 
 
 ' Refrain thy voice from weeping 
 
 Thine eyes from tears! 
 For a guerdon awaits thy labour; 
 Their return from the enemy's land! ' 
 
 (3) xxxi. 1820 
 Ephraim! s Repentance and Forgiveness 
 
 18 1 have heard, I have heard 
 
 Ephraim bemoaning: 
 'Thou hast punished me, and I took correction ? 
 
 Like an untamed colt. 
 Restore me, and I will return: 
 
 Thou art Yahwe, my God! 
 J 9 For after I turned I was sorry 
 
 I smote on my thigh; 
 In shame and confusion I bear 
 
 The reproach of my youth.' 
 
 30 Is Ephraim my favourite son, 
 
 A darling child ? 
 That as oft as I mention his name 
 
 His memory haunts Me! 
 Thus does My heart yearn for him 
 
 My pity is stirred. 
 
 (4) xxxi. 21, 22 
 A Summons to return 
 
 21 Set thee up way-marks, 
 
 Raise thee posts! 
 Heedfully mark the highway, 
 The road thou hast gone!
 
 302 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 Come back, O Virgin of Israel ! 
 
 To these thy cities return! 
 22 How long will thy hesitance last, 
 Thou erring daughter? 
 
 The fact that these poems have been preserved in a 
 section of the book which has obviously been edited for 
 a special purpose in a later age does not weigh very 
 heavily against the assumption that they were written 
 by Jeremiah. We might expect that a compilation of 
 this nature under the name of Jeremiah would contain 
 a kernel of genuine words of that prophet; and if we 
 can find a series of passages whose literary qualities are 
 on a level with his best work, we must regard it as 
 probable that these at least are genuine. That this is 
 the case with the four passages quoted will hardly be 
 denied by any competent judge of poetry. For origin- 
 ality of conception, vividness of imagination, and depth 
 of feeling, they are unsurpassed by anything in the 
 book, or even in the whole Old Testament. And when 
 we discover further a coincidence of ideas, and striking 
 stylistic affinities, with other writings of Jeremiah r , the 
 presumption that he is the author far outweighs any 
 considerations that can be advanced to the contrary. 
 
 The problem before us is first of all a biographical 
 one, or at least one that can be most easily stated in 
 terms of biography. It is to find a period in Jeremiah's 
 history which would account for the sudden outburst 
 of joy and hope which is characteristic of these poems, 
 as well as the specific direction taken by the prophet's 
 
 1 Note the close parallel between the third poem above and ch. iii. 
 20 ff.; and between xxxi. 2 f. and ii. 24. Of stylistic resemblances the 
 most marked is the pleonastic sequence of the passive on the active verb 
 (or the simple form on the causative) (xxxi. 4, 18 bis\ cf. xi. 18, xv. 19, 
 xvii. 14, xx. 7). We may note also in xxxi. 20 the characteristic Jere- 
 mianic idiom of the alternative question followed by the circumstance 
 which suggests it, as in ii. 14, 31, viii. 4 f., 22, xiv. 19, xxii. 28; and a 
 slight reminiscence of ii. 25 in xxxi. 16.
 
 xvi] II. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL 303 
 
 anticipation : in particular the predominant, if not ex- 
 clusive, interest in the restoration of the northern tribes. 
 Now it was suggested in Chap, xiv (pp. 276 f.) that the 
 narrative of Baruch supplies a situation which corre- 
 sponds to the conditions under which such hopes as 
 are here expressed might naturally originate. If there 
 was any time of unalloyed happiness in the life of 
 Jeremiah, it was the few months spent with Gedaliah 
 at Mizpah after the destruction of Jerusalem. The 
 long-threatened judgment on the nation was at length 
 accomplished, and under the protection of the Baby- 
 lonian power the survivors of the catastrophe were 
 permitted to form a new community, stripped of earthly 
 might and all pretension to secular magnificence, but 
 capable of being moulded into harmony with the pro- 
 phetic ideal of a true people of God. There is every 
 probability that in this fresh start in the national life 
 Jeremiah recognised the germ of the future kingdom 
 of Yahwe, and the dawn of the golden age to which the 
 prophets had looked forward. It was indeed the day of 
 small things, but it was sufficient in a mind like Jere- 
 miah's to inspire the hope of the greatest things, even 
 the inbringing of the final salvation, the acceptable year 
 of the Lord. In such a time of simple contented industry 
 and dawning agricultural prosperity we can best under- 
 stand the breaking into song of the prophet's long 
 repressed but inextinguishable affection for his nation, 
 and the glowing pictures of Samaria's fertile hills 
 clothed with vines, and happy maidens dancing to the 
 music of their tambourines. 
 
 It is much more difficult to find a satisfactory explana- 
 tion of the prophet's steady gaze to the north as the 
 theatre of the coming blessedness a feature which is 
 plain on the surface of the first three poems, and is 
 probably to be assumed in the fourth. We remember, 
 of course, that he was a Benjamite, with a warm feeling
 
 304 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH 
 
 for the religious traditions that clustered round the 
 ancient sanctuary of the Rachel tribes at Shiloh. We 
 realise also that he was living (as we assume) at Mizpah, 
 itself in the territory of Benjamin, with a wide outlook 
 toward the richer uplands of Ephraim still further 
 north, and within four miles at most of Ramah where 
 the tomb of their common ancestress Rachel was shown. 
 But how far is he dealing with ideal abstractions with 
 Rachel and Ephraim and the Virgin of Israel as per- 
 sonifications of the present and future inhabitants of 
 these regions? Or how far is the return of which he 
 speaks a literal return of the hopelessly scattered 
 Israelites who had been carried captive by the Assyrians 
 so long before? In order to find some light on these 
 questions a few notes on the exegesis of the four poems 
 may be necessary. 
 
 In the first poem, the meaning of the opening stanza 
 is very obscure. It may be understood either as a refer- 
 ence to the first meeting of Israel with Yah we in the 
 desert of Sinai (cf. Hos. ix. 10), or as a figurative 
 description of the present condition of the people in 
 exile, and its impending restoration through the inex- 
 haustible grace and kindness of Yahwe. Neither view 
 yields a perfectly clear sense; but it seems probable that 
 both situations are combined in the prophet's mind: 
 the 'ancient love' of Yahwe for Israel, first manifested 
 in the wilderness sojourn (cf. ch. ii. 2-4) is the ground 
 and pledge of its ultimate redemption. The next strophe 
 gives a picture of the future prosperity and felicity of 
 the restored nation, in which the point to be noted is 
 the concentration of the prophet's interest on the central 
 district of Palestine (v. 5). Yet the following verse 
 implies that the religious centre of the new Israel will 
 be Jerusalem (v. 6). Now we learn from ch. xli. 5 that 
 at the very time when Jeremiah was at Mizpah men 
 went on pilgrimage from northern cities Shechem >
 
 xvi] II. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL 305 
 
 Shiloh, Samaria to the ruined shrine of Yahwe on 
 Mount Zion. The prediction of v. 6 might thus be 
 explained as a projection of the actual condition of 
 things into the ideal future: pilgrims would then go 
 up to the house of God, no longer with signs of mourn- 
 ing on their persons, but with the joy of the multitude 
 keeping holy day. On this interpretation the poem 
 might deal with the restoration of Israel as a unity, 
 without reference to a return of the lost Ten Tribes, 
 the only return from exile contemplated being that of 
 the Judeans recently deported by Nebuchadnezzar. 
 But whether this view does justice to the series as a 
 whole is a matter which will call for further considera- 
 tion. 
 
 The verses on the Weeping of Rachel present a similar 
 ambiguity. The meaning may be that Rachel, the 
 ancestress of the central tribes, is still mourning over 
 the long-lost children of the Assyrian captivity, and 
 that it is their return which is predicted. But the passage 
 might be read differently in the light of an attractive 
 conjecture which has been put forward by some writers 1 . 
 It is pointed out that it was just at Ramah that Jeremiah 
 was released from the gang of prisoners who were being 
 transported to Babylon, among whom there must have 
 been many Benjamite inhabitants of Jerusalem. It cer- 
 tainly gives an additional interest and significance to 
 this touching poem if we suppose that the idea came to 
 Jeremiah on the spot; so that the weeping of Rachel is 
 not a purely imaginary lament over a distant past, but 
 is a reflexion of the actual lamentation heard over those 
 who were even then being torn from her bosom. It is 
 difficult to say which of these conceptions gives the key 
 to the meaning of the poem. The first definitely implies 
 the expectation of a literal return of the northern exiles 
 
 1 Hitzig, Kurzgefasstes exeg. Handbuch, ad loc.\ Schmidt, p. 354; 
 so Delitzsch, Orelli and others. 
 
 S.P.R. 20
 
 3 o6 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 from 'Halah and Habor, the river of Gozan, and the 
 cities of the Medes' (2 Kings xvii. 6), while the second 
 is consistent with the view that the hope of a return is 
 limited to the Judeans recently banished by Nebuchad- 
 nezzar. 
 
 In the third poem the subject is Ephraim, the 
 masculine personification of North Israel. It is again 
 doubtful whether the name stands for the exiled 
 descendants of Sargon's captivity or for the population 
 of the territory once occupied by the tribe of Ephraim; 
 and the doubt is not resolved by a comparison with the 
 parallel passage in ch. iii, where the same uncertainty 
 has to be reckoned with. There is here, however, no 
 mention of a restoration from captivity; the return 
 spoken of is a spiritual process of penitence and re- 
 generation in the heart of the people. 
 
 The last passage is a Summons to return, which can 
 hardly be understood except in a physical sense. Indeed, 
 the twenty-first verse taken by itself reads like an ex- 
 hortation to the departing captives to mark carefully 
 the road by which they travel, so that they may find 
 their way back; and in that case the reference must be 
 to the recent deportation after the fall of Jerusalem. 
 But that impression is not borne out by the language of 
 v. 22, which seems addressed to a people that has long 
 hesitated to choose the narrow path of return to God 
 by genuine repentance and confession. 
 
 We observe, then, throughout the series a fixed 
 expectation of a return of exiled Israelites, along with 
 a marked and intelligible bias of interest in the future 
 of the central tribes, or at least of the central region of 
 the land. Now undoubtedly the simplest view to take 
 of the prophet's outlook is to identify the subjects of 
 these two aspirations, and hold that the exiles whose 
 return is prophesied are the descendants of the northern 
 Israelites, who are to reoccupy their ancient abode. The
 
 xvij II. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL 307 
 
 alternative explanation is to separate the subjects, 
 applying the promise of return to the Jewish captivity 
 as representative of the historic nation of Israel, and 
 taking the conversion of Ephraim to mean a revival of 
 the true religion among the actual inhabitants of the 
 northern province, and their incorporation in the new 
 Israel whose centre was in Jerusalem. It is difficult on 
 either view to harmonise the conflicting indications 
 which we have pointed out in the poems; and the issue 
 is only complicated by a reference to the very similar 
 dilemma in which we were placed by the criticism of 
 ch. iii. We saw in the exposition of that chapter r that 
 according to one analysis its theme is the restoration of 
 Israel as distinct from, and indeed in contrast to, Judah; 
 while another analysis leads to the conclusion that the 
 conversion of Judah, alone or as representing the ideal 
 unity of Israel, is contemplated. Now ch. iii is commonly 
 regarded as an early prophecy of Jeremiah, and if we 
 are right in assigning the poems of ch. xxxi to his 
 latest years, we must recognise that the situation had 
 been entirely changed by the overthrow and captivity 
 of the kingdom of Judah. In regard to ch. iii it was 
 arguable that the idea of a return of the Ten Tribes 
 came into Jeremiah's mind through reflexion on the 
 deeper guilt of Judah, which suggested that the less 
 guilty sister-nation, who had already suffered the 
 penalty of her apostasy, would be first recalled to her 
 divine husband's love, and would prove responsive to 
 the call. But that motive would cease to operate when 
 Judah also had been banished for her sins; and in any 
 case it is too casual in its suggested origin to account 
 for the expectation of a return of the northern tribes as a 
 permanent feature of the prophet's eschatology. If on 
 the other hand we disconnect the latter part of ch. iii 
 from the appeal to North Israel, and take it to be a 
 1 PP- 79~%3 above. 
 
 20 2
 
 3 o8 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 description of the repentance of Judah, we lose touch 
 entirely with the idea of a restoration of the northern 
 tribes which is prominent in ch. xxxi; for the striking 
 correspondence between iii. 2125 and xxxi. 1820 
 will prove nothing except that Jeremiah's conception of 
 repentance is the same whether the subject be Judah or 
 Ephraim. The question in regard to ch. xxxi is not 
 whether a restoration of North Israel be predicted, but 
 only what kind of restoration is meant a literal return 
 from exile, or a spiritual return of the remaining 
 children of Rachel and Ephraim to the true religion of 
 Israel. On the whole it seems safest to adhere to the 
 literal interpretation : that Jeremiah living within sight 
 of the ancient and hallowed centres of the worship of 
 Yahwe was filled with a passionate longing and hope 
 for the return of the disinherited and scattered sons of 
 the north who were the rightful heirs of the promises 
 made to the fathers. 
 
 The main point, however, is that in some sense a 
 restoration of the Israelite nationality was the form in 
 which Jeremiah conceived the future kingdom of God. 
 The idea of a world-religion in which there should be 
 neither Jew nor Gentile, 'barbarian, Scythian, bond 
 nor free,' was not reached by him. A conversion of the 
 heathen world to the religion of Yahwe was indeed 
 within his vision, as the following isolated oracle shows 
 (xvi. 19 f.). 
 
 J 9 Yahwe, my fort and my fortress, 
 
 My refuge in time of need! 
 To Thee shall nations come 
 
 From the ends of the earth, and say: 
 
 * Mere lies have our fathers possessed, 
 
 Vanities that profit nothing. 
 20 Can a man make gods for himself, 
 Though they really be no gods?'
 
 xvi] II. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL 309 
 
 What the relation of these converted idolaters to the 
 future people of God will be is nowhere indicated 1 ; 
 but it would certainly be a mistake to suppose that the 
 reinstatement of Israel as a nation is a mere local 
 incident of a new age in which the knowledge of the true 
 God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. 
 
 This concentration of interest on the new Israel is 
 due to a limitation inherent in the Old Testament point 
 of view which even Jeremiah was unable to transcend. 
 The limitation springs from a fundamental truth of 
 religion, that religion has a social aspect, and cannot 
 unfold its full powers except in a community; and 
 nationality was the only form of religious community 
 known to the men of the Old Testament. The idea of a 
 new community created by the spirit of religion itself 
 and founded on a relation to God common to all its 
 members, was beyond their grasp, because the con- 
 ditions for the formation of such a community did not 
 yet exist. They therefore clung to the traditional idea 
 of Israel as the people in whose history the true God 
 had revealed Himself, and within whose fellowship 
 their personal communion with God was realised. This 
 we must hold to be true of Jeremiah. The individualism 
 which comes to light in him more clearly than in any 
 other Old Testament writer proved incapable of break- 
 ing finally with the principle of national religion, for 
 the reason just indicated, that it was powerless to create 
 a new spiritual fellowship in place of the old. Thus 
 while to Jeremiah the nation is no longer the unit of 
 religion, it is still the sphere of religion, within which 
 its aspiration after fellowship in work and worship is 
 satisfied. This will appear more clearly when we come 
 to consider his prophecy of the New Covenant. 
 
 1 In ch. xii. 1417 a passage of more doubtful genuineness the 
 neighbouring heathen nations are spoken of as being incorporated (under 
 conditions) in the people of Yahwe.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION (continued): 
 III. THE MESSIANIC KING 
 
 ^ II ^HE figure of the Messiah holds a very subordinate, 
 JL and indeed precarious, position, in the eschatology 
 of Jeremiah. In speaking of his attitude to that ideal as 
 'negative' I did not mean to assert absolutely that it 
 has no place in his scheme of the future; but only, 
 first, that the few passages in which it occurs are all 
 doubtful, and, secondly, that even if some of them be 
 genuine the portrait appears in faded colours, and 
 shorn of the ideal grandeur and religious significance 
 which it has in the Messianic prophecies commonly 
 attributed to Isaiah. We may pass over the obviously 
 secondary prophecy of ch. xxxiii. 1 5, which occurs in 
 a long section wanting in the LXX and representing a 
 sacerdotal interest in religion utterly inconsistent with 
 the spirit of Jeremiah, and rests on a misinterpretation 
 of ch. xxiii. 5 f. (see below). Equally destitute of origin- 
 ality is the Messianic allusion to the future David in 
 xxx. 9. The combination of Yahwe as God and David 
 as king is characteristic of Ezekiel (xxxiv. 23, 24, 
 xxxvii. 23-25), and the exact phrase here used is found 
 in Hosea iii. 5. The latter reference might suggest that 
 Jeremiah himself has borrowed it from Hosea; but 
 apart from the doubtful authenticity of the Hosea 
 passage, the whole context in which xxx. 9 stands 
 shows it to be the result of somewhat illiterate editorial 
 manipulation. In the obscure twenty-first verse of the 
 same chapter we have a striking description of the future 
 ' ' Addir or Moshel as one who, being of genuine Israelite
 
 CH.XVII] III. THE MESSIANIC KING 311 
 
 descent, is endowed with the priestly prerogative of 
 access to the immediate presence of Yahwe. Whether 
 the passage is in any sense Messianic, whether it refers 
 to a unique individual or to a line of theocratic princes, 
 it is difficult to tell; but it implies an experience of 
 foreign rule, and an estimate of the privileges of priest- 
 hood, which are irreconcilable with the times and the 
 teaching of Jeremiah. The only passage, in short, of 
 strictly Messianic import which can plausibly be 
 assigned to Jeremiah is ch. xxiii. 5 f.; and this demands 
 a careful examination. The oracle runs as follows: 
 
 Lo, days are coming, saith Yahwe, when I will raise up to 
 David a genuine Scion (pH n/), and he shall reign as 
 king and prosper, and execute right and justice in the land (or 
 world). In his days shall Judah be saved, and Israel dwell in 
 security; and this is the name by which he shall be called, 
 4 Yahwe is our righteousness.' 
 
 Apart from the question of its authorship, this 
 passage has a general interest as expressing the per- 
 sistent central features of Israel's Messianic ideal: 
 some utterances may rise above it, and others fall below 
 it; but the main elements of the conception are those 
 here registered. The Messiah is the ideal king of the 
 future, ruling in virtue of a unique personal relation to 
 Yahwe, which is here symbolised in his name. He is 'of 
 the house and lineage of David,' and wields the sceptre 
 of righteousness, and prospers in all his undertakings. 
 His reign is the pledge of his people's welfare and 
 victory through Yahwe's gracious presence with them 
 through him. Whether universal dominion be an 
 essential of the notion is open to question, and the 
 uncertainty is reflected in the ambiguity of the word 
 fHK in v. 5, which may mean either 'land' or 'world.' 
 At all events his reign confers on Israel a primacy 
 among the nations; and it is probably in accord with
 
 312 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 the deeper thought of the Old Testament that there is 
 here no hint of military or despotic domination over 
 the Gentiles. We may therefore accept the passage as 
 an adequate expression of the prophetic doctrine of the 
 Messiah, and proceed to inquire whether such a con- 
 ception harmonises with the general principles of 
 Jeremiah's thinking 1 . 
 
 1 The literary evidence for and against the genuineness of the verses 
 is pretty evenly balanced, and has led different writers to opposite con- 
 clusions. The main points are these: (i) The oracle is introduced by an 
 eschatological formula (O^JO D*/b^ H^n) which occurs 16 times in 
 Jeremiah, 3 times in Amos, and also in i Sam. ii. 31, 2 Kings xx. 17 
 (= Isa. xxxix. 6), and which in the great majority of cases is a mark of 
 late origin. (2) This impression is strengthened by the fact that vv. 5 f. 
 do not form a natural sequel to vv. 14: in these latter we read of 
 'shepherds' in the plural, who shall be raised up to replace the evil 
 shepherds who have wasted the flock of Yahwe (cf. Ezek. xxxiv. I fF., 
 xxxvii. 1 5 fF.); in vv.c, f. of an individual 'Sprout' who shall be raised to 
 protect and govern the people. That there is an irreconcilable contra- 
 diction between these representations it would be too much to affirm, 
 but nevertheless they seem to belong to different circles of ideas. Cornill 
 endeavours to save the genuineness of vv. 5 f. by denying that of vv. 
 3, 4; but vv. 1-4 form a much more homogeneous oracle than vv. I, 
 2, 5, 6, and to my sense of poetic form vv. i, 2, are not one whit more 
 metrical than 3, 4. That v. 3 could not have been written by Jeremiah 
 would therefore only prove that the whole section is spurious, not that 
 what remains is genuine. No motive can be assigned for the insertion 
 of vv. 3 f. between v . 2 and v. 5, if these had been originally connected, 
 and their excision would only be justified if there were positive grounds 
 for believing that what precedes and what follows were from Jeremiah's 
 hand. (3) In favour of Jeremiah's authorship the strongest argument is 
 the occurrence of the name flttX ^ a Messianic title applied to Zerubbabel 
 in the prophecies of Zechariah. It is contended that Jer. xxiii. 5 f. is 
 an intermediate link between the use of the word (in its literal sense of 
 Vegetation') in Isa. iv. 2 and its use as a technical designation of the 
 Messiah in Zech. iii. 8 and vi. 12. But to prove that our prophecy is 
 earlier than Zechariah is not to prove that it is Jeremiah's. It is quite 
 conceivable that all the passages are post-exilic and of a date more nearly 
 contemporary with Zechariah (f. 520 B.C.). (4) Another argument, on 
 which Cornill lays great stress is based on a supposed cryptic allusion to 
 the last king of Judah (liTp'TO) in the name here given to the Messiah
 
 xvii] III. THE MESSIANIC KING 313 
 
 That question can be most usefully discussed in 
 connexion with a thesis still more general, which has 
 been most elaborately maintained by Volz 1 : viz. that 
 the idea of a personal Messiah is inconsistent with the 
 presuppositions of pre-Exilic prophecy as a whole. 
 According to Volz Jeremiah is the first prophet in 
 whom we detect the influence of current Messianic 
 ideas which had taken possession of the popular mind. 
 He supposes that the expectation of the Messiah was 
 a recent outgrowth of the revived spirit of nationalism 
 which marked the later part of Josiah's reign. It origin- 
 ated in court circles, with the leaders of the patriotic 
 party, whose chief concern was the outward aggrandise- 
 ment of the nation; it was then adopted by the more 
 strictly religious party which carried through the 
 Deuteronomic reformation; and finally the true prophets 
 of Yahwe yielded to the force of opinion, and found a 
 place for the Messiah in their pictures of the future. 
 The first to adopt the conception expressly was Ezekiel; 
 
 HUT)- It is pointed out that the prophecy stands at the end of a 
 
 series of oracles on the later Judean kings, just where we should expect 
 one on Zedekiah, that Jeremiah had good reasons for refraining from 
 a personal attack on that weak but well-meaning king, and that therefore 
 he directs his polemic against the courtiers and aristocrats (D^JH) wno 
 enforced their will on the monarch, and contents himself with showing 
 by a covert allusion to his name that he had not left him altogether out 
 of account! I do not think that this rather fantastic hypothesis will bear 
 comparison with the much more rational view of Duhm: that xxiii. 14 
 is the work of an editor, summing up the section on the kings of Judah 
 with the promise of better days to come, and that this was afterwards 
 supplemented by prophecies of a more explicitly Messianic character 
 in 5 f., 7 f. (It should be noted that vv. 7 f. have a closer connexion 
 with 14 than with 5 f.). The critical arguments tend on the whole to 
 undermine confidence in the authenticity of the passage, but the negative 
 conclusion is not so certain as to render superfluous a consideration of 
 Jeremiah's attitude towards the Messianic hope. There is always the 
 possibility that vv. 5, 6 are an independent prophecy of his. 
 1 Die vorexilische J ' akweprophetie und der Messias (1897).
 
 3H THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 but the manner in which it appears in his writings (xvii. 
 22 ff., xxi. 27) shows that it is not original but must 
 have been borrowed from some quarter; and since it is 
 not found in previous prophets it must have been 
 derived from the popular eschatology of the time. The 
 position assigned to Jeremiah in this development is a 
 peculiar one. The deeper elements in his thinking his 
 knowledge of God, for example, and his perception of 
 the spirituality and inwardness of true religion reacted 
 against Messianism in all its forms, and prevented him 
 from actually accepting the idea of the Messianic king; 
 nevertheless in certain aspects of his eschatology he 
 approximates to the range of ideas in which the hope of 
 a Messiah was born. This appears chiefly in his view of 
 the future people of Yahwe as a politically organised 
 community, with a ruling class purified from the vices 
 of the old regime (iii. 1 5, xxiii. 4), as a necessary con- 
 dition of the enjoyment of the blessings of salvation. 
 Although that anticipation is not Messianic in the full 
 and strict sense, it is an accommodation to those 
 tendencies of the age which gave rise to the prevalent 
 belief in the Messiah. Thus, while Jeremiah was 
 conscious of the radical opposition between the genius 
 of prophecy and the spirit which nourished the Mes- 
 sianic hope, we can see at the same time how that idea 
 exercised a disturbing influence on his mind, and began 
 to deflect the fundamental principles of pre-Exilic 
 prophecy from their proper orbit. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of these clever specula- 
 tions, it cannot be said that they spring from a very 
 exalted or penetrating estimate of the character and 
 teaching of Jeremiah. That the prophet whose whole 
 life was spent in solitary opposition to public opinion, 
 who was never known to falter in fidelity to his own 
 convictions, who had seen and fearlessly exposed the 
 subtle dangers of the Deuteronomic movement, should
 
 xvn] III. THE MESSIANIC KING 315 
 
 have compromised with the far less specious pretensions 
 of national chauvinism, is a supposition which would 
 require very strong evidence to induce any intelligent 
 admirer of the prophet to entertain it. But in truth 
 Volz's theory is but an ingenious solution of difficulties 
 which are not in Jeremiah's real attitude at all, but 
 only in the false situation into which he is forced by the 
 theory itself. There is not the slightest affinity between 
 Jeremiah's descriptions of the future religious com- 
 munity and the dream of a powerful military State 
 which is alleged to be the basis of the Messianic ex- 
 pectation, nor on the other hand is there any disharmony 
 between the former and the ruling ideas of the pro- 
 phetic theology. Volz admits (p. 73) the sobriety of the 
 pictures of the last days presented by Jeremiah : of a 
 people assured of no outward splendour but only of 
 a quiet and peaceful life in the land of Canaan, of a 
 government devoid of might and glory and charged 
 only with the maintenance of internal order and the 
 unimpeded exercise of religion. But he makes the mis- 
 take of identifying the prophetic denunciations of the 
 existing political system with opposition to State 
 organisation of any sort; and thus is led to regard the 
 very few and uncertain allusions in Jeremiah to a new 
 government (iii. 15, xxiii. 4) as a toning down of 
 worldly aspirations alien to the principles of the prophets, 
 instead of a natural projection of these principles into 
 the ideal future. The whole construction is governed 
 by the assumption that Jeremiah is a stepping stone 
 from the blank negation of the earlier prophets to the 
 express recognition of the Messianic ideal by Ezekiel; 
 and hence it was necessary .irst to account for the origin 
 of the ideal outside prophetic circles, and then to show 
 how it gradually succeeded in naturalising itself in the 
 environment of prophetic thought. But it is pure con- 
 jecture that the figure of the Messiah was a creation of
 
 316 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 the time of Jeremiah; or that it was first inspired by the 
 character or prowess of Josiah; or that it was fostered 
 by the impulses which led to the Deuteronomic reform : 
 each of these positions is beset by difficulties which 
 Volz has hardly faced. And here, indeed, his arguments 
 may be turned against his own theory. For if as is 
 very possible the idea was taken over by the canonical 
 prophets from the current religion of their day, this 
 was just as likely to have happened in the time of 
 Isaiah as in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel; there 
 being absolutely nothing to forbid the supposition that 
 the hope of a personal Messiah formed a part of the 
 prevalent eschatology in the eighth century as well as 
 in the sixth : the silence of the documents is the same 
 in both cases. In any event it seems to me highly im- 
 probable that the Messianic expectation foisted itself 
 on the consciousness of the prophets by a process which 
 involves a weakening hold of the moral essence of 
 religion on the part of a man like Jeremiah. 
 
 The root fallacy of Volz's position seems to be that 
 he draws a distinction between the political and the 
 religious which is foreign to the Old Testament point 
 of view. To him the Messiah is essentially a political 
 figure, not a directly religious factor of the final salva- 
 tion. He belongs not to the category of properly spiritual 
 blessings, but to that of external benefits conferred 
 by Yahwe on the nation. He is nowhere represented 
 as a prophet or a teacher; he stands in no immediate 
 relation to the individual, but only to the community 
 as a whole. He is the Deliverer from oppression, the 
 Ruler of the golden age. He is, in short, a symbol of 
 the particularistic aspect of the eschatological hope of 
 Israel's aspiration after material greatness and world- 
 power. There is of course much in this that is perfectly 
 true. That the Messiah is a political personage is one 
 of those things which no one has thought of denying.
 
 xvn] III. THE MESSIANIC KING 317 
 
 He is a King, and the office of a king is necessarily 
 political. The mistake, as I have said, is to separate two 
 things which are never separated in the minds of Old 
 Testament writers. It is no doubt an imperfection of 
 the Hebrew religion that it was unable to conceive a 
 nation's communion with God otherwise than as medi- 
 ated through temporal blessings, among which are 
 included the political blessings of good government and 
 a measure of earthly might and dominion. But the 
 limitation lies in the facts of the case. Volz admits that 
 there is a vein of particularism in the teaching of the 
 prophets; so that even if the Messiah were in the first 
 instance a projection of nationalist feeling there is no 
 necessary incongruity between the ideal and the pro- 
 phetic view of the future. He even acknowledges that 
 a certain religious significance does attach to the idea 
 of the Messiah, although he considers this to be a 
 secondary and subordinate aspect. A personage who 
 governs by the power of Yahwe, who is endowed with 
 the spirit of God, who causes the divine will to prevail 
 by his rule, and is himself a model of true piety and 
 morality, is as distinctly a religious figure as any known 
 to the Old Testament. Whether these aspects of the 
 ideal be primary or secondary makes little difference. 
 We may say that the Messiah of the prophets is primarily 
 a political figure to which a religious significance was 
 necessarily attached, or that he is primarily a religious 
 ideal to which political features were added : on neither 
 view is the assertion justified that the conception is 
 irreconcilable with the presuppositions of pre-Exilic 
 prophecy. 
 
 On the other hand Volz is right in insisting that the 
 distinctive features of Jeremiah's prophecy are not con- 
 genial to the Messianic idea in its Old Testament 
 forms. In his profoundly personal experience of religion 
 he seems to break through the limits of nationalism,
 
 318 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 and to reach forward to a conception which is at once 
 universal embracing the heathen in the divine purpose 
 of salvation (xvi. 1 9) and individual, having its source 
 in the fellowship of the human soul with God. We have 
 seen that this side of his thinking is developed in an 
 eschatological direction in his assurance to the Exiles 
 in Babylon that the essential exercise of religion was 
 possible for them under conditions which excluded the 
 appearing of a Messiah. In so far as the Messianic 
 idea represents the combined elements of nationalism 
 and particularism it is out of harmony with the deepest 
 tendencies of Jeremiah's teaching. Yet we have also 
 seen that the principles of individualism and univer- 
 salism are not carried out to their logical issues by 
 Jeremiah. He shares with all the prophets the belief 
 that the religious community of the future is to be a 
 new people of Israel. Hence we cannot assume a -priori 
 that his outlook leaves no room for a restored Davidic 
 monarchy, or for an ideal King of the last days : that is 
 for a personal Messiah. 
 
 Whether he actually cherished that expectation re- 
 mains doubtful, for the reasons we have stated. It 
 depends on the authenticity of the single oracle in 
 which it finds expression (xxiii. 5, 6). Two observations 
 may be made. In the first place, the form in which the 
 idea is presented is not inconsistent with the subdued 
 colours in which Jeremiah elsewhere depicts the future 
 blessedness of Israel. The Messiah as here described 
 is no warrior king, or conquering hero, who vanquishes 
 foreign nations and establishes a mighty empire on the 
 earth, but a just and pious ruler who maintains righteous- 
 ness in the land, and in virtue of his relation to Yahwe 
 is the medium of divine succour and security to his 
 people. There is nothing here unworthy of Jeremiah, 
 or out of keeping with his conception of a peaceful and 
 well-ordered commonwealth enjoying the blessing of
 
 xvii] III. THE MESSIANIC KING 319 
 
 Yahwe in its own land and under its own government. 
 But, in the second place, the fact that the idea appears 
 only in one doubtful passage, and is absent from the 
 late prophecies of ch. xxxi, shows that it can never have 
 laid a very strong hold on the imagination of the prophet. 
 It is at best extraneous to the vital truths of his message, 
 not organically related to them, and still less arising out 
 of them, but adopted from tradition with an antithetic 
 reference to the unworthy occupants of the kingly office 
 in Jeremiah's time. When we compare the passage with 
 the lofty idealism of the Messianic prophecies in Isaiah 
 (ix. i6, xi. 18), we feel that the idea has lost something 
 of the glamour of its first inception. To Isaiah the 
 Messiah is a semi-divine personage, the radiant source 
 of supernatural powers which regenerate nature and 
 human society; in Jeremiah he is an ordinary good 
 king, and in a religious sense is merely the symbol of 
 the truth expressed in his name, that 'Yahwe is our 
 righteousness.' The contrast suggests that the passage 
 in Jeremiah belongs not to a waxing but to a waning 
 phase of the Messianic hope in Israel, but a phase in 
 which it still remains true to the ethical and spiritual 
 character impressed upon it by the inspiration of Isaiah. 
 Great ideals like this do not as a rule make their way 
 into religion by a gradual assimilation and transforma- 
 tion of the material by the spiritual, as Volz supposes 
 to have been the case with the Messianic idea. They 
 commonly burst in all their splendour on the mind of 
 a great religious genius, and fade into the light of 
 common day as new aspirations and ideals are evoked 
 by the living spirit of revelation, fulfilling himself in 
 many ways.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION (continued}: 
 IV. THE NEW COVENANT 
 
 WE come in the last place to the locus classicus of 
 Jeremiah's eschatology, the passage which has 
 generally been held to express his deepest insight into 
 the final manifestation of religion the prophecy of the 
 New Covenant in ch. xxxi. 3134. The genuineness of 
 this oracle is energetically disputed; and standing as it 
 does in a series of disconnected and critically doubtful 
 utterances, one cannot but feel with Cornill that it is no 
 light matter now-a-days to maintain that it was written 
 by Jeremiah. To establish that position proof would be 
 required that the ideas are so intimately related to the 
 structure of Jeremiah's thinking as to make it highly 
 improbable that they should have been expressed by 
 any other than he. Unfortunately the questions of 
 authorship and of meaning are so bound up that the 
 exegesis is apt to be biassed by assumptions as to the 
 authorship, and vice versa. Thus we may read into the 
 words a view of religion so profoundly spiritual and 
 personal that it is hardly conceivable that any one else 
 than Jeremiah could have written them. On the other 
 hand they may be interpreted in a trivial and formal 
 sense which would stamp them unmistakably as the 
 composition of a late Jewish legalist. The problem has 
 therefore to be approached from two sides, and a 
 satisfactory solution will only be reached if we find them 
 to converge on one result. 
 
 We begin by inquiring whether the conception of 
 religion as based on a covenant is in any degree charac-
 
 CH.XVIII] IV. THE NEW COVENANT 321 
 
 teristic of Jeremiah; and if so in what way the idea 
 may have entered his mind. Unless the first question 
 can be answered affirmatively, it is clear that nothing 
 will be gained by ascribing the prophecy to Jeremiah. 
 Now, neither of these questions is so easily answered as 
 they were supposed to be at the time when Guthe wrote 
 his standard Latin dissertation on the Jeremianic notion 
 of the covenant (1877). At that time the book of 
 Jeremiah was generally accepted as in the main an 
 authentic record of the prophet's ministry; and it was 
 possible to cite 24 occurrences of the word Eerith 
 which had not been seriously challenged by critics. 
 But now there is hardly one of those passages in which 
 the word is found which has not been declared spurious 
 by one eminent scholar or another. It does not follow 
 that they must all be summarily rejected: there are 
 many to which exception is taken on grounds that are 
 far from convincing; and the point to be determined is 
 whether there are enough to warrant the conclusion 
 that the idea formed an integral element in Jeremiah's 
 view of religion. 
 
 The idea of the covenant appears first in Jeremiah 
 in connexion with Josiah's reformation. In the pre- 
 Deuteronomic discourses, represented broadly by chs. 
 ii-vi, we find no trace of it. There the relation between 
 Yahwe and Israel is conceived in personal terms, as 
 resting on mutual affection hesed^ which means kind- 
 ness or grace on the part of Yahwe and loyal piety on 
 the part of Israel. For this view of religion the appro- 
 priate image is the marriage-bond, with its implications 
 of love and fidelity and trust. It should not be over- 
 looked, however, that we also find the conception of 
 religion as a discipline a yoke which had been cast off 
 (ii. 20, v. 5); and in this we may perhaps recognise a 
 point of affinity with the Covenant-idea. Indeed, the 
 figure of marriage itself, with its formal abrogation by 
 
 S.P.R. 21
 
 322 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 a 'bill of divorcement,' has a legal aspect which under 
 certain circumstances might develop into the more 
 abstract conception of the Covenant. 
 
 Be that as it may, the earliest express mention of the 
 Covenant occurs in ch. xi. i 8, a passage which we 
 have already examined in discussing Jeremiah's attitude 
 to the Deuteronomic movement 1 . The result there 
 reached is not of vital moment for the point now to be 
 insisted on, so long as it is admitted that the narrative 
 contains at least a kernel of genuine words of Jeremiah. 
 Whether the real fact be that Jeremiah accepted the 
 national Covenant with its documentary basis as having 
 divine authority, or whether he merely adopted and 
 gave a wider range to the 'general idea of Deuteronomy, 
 that of the covenant between Yahwe and Israel'; on 
 either view and on the second even more obviously 
 than on the first he recognised the validity of the 
 Covenant-idea as a formal expression of the religious 
 bond between God and His people. Now, the sudden 
 emergence of the idea at this particular juncture can 
 hardly be accidental. It suggests that the notion did not 
 originate with Jeremiah, and was not a product of his 
 spontaneous reflexion. It was due to the impression 
 made on his mind by the great transaction of the year 
 621, in which for a time he saw a return to the purity 
 of the national faith, which was full of promise for the 
 future. With the previous history of the conception we 
 are not here directly concerned. It is not a direct 
 inheritance from the older prophets, although Hosea 
 (viii. i) may have been acquainted with it. Most prob- 
 ably it belonged to the oral and literary tradition of the 
 Mosaic period, and through priestly influence it may 
 have become the property of the combined prophetic 
 and priestly party which carried through the Deutero- 
 nomic reform. In the seventh century it must have 
 
 1 PP- 97-102-
 
 xvinj IV. THE NEW COVENANT 323 
 
 met some deeply felt want of the age, so that when a 
 great religious reformation was contemplated it took 
 by common consent the form of a renewal of the 
 Covenant with Yahwe. 
 
 It is a further question whether the conception 
 became a permanent element of the thinking of Jere- 
 miah; and on that point the evidence is less decisive 
 than might be desired. In the sequel of ch. xi (vv. 9, 10), 
 written probably in the reign of Jehoiakim, the people 
 are said to have returned to the sins of their fathers, 
 and thereby broken Yahwe's Covenant, as if they had 
 entered into a 'conspiracy' to do so. There seem to be 
 no good reasons for denying the originality of this 
 utterance; and it clearly implies that the thought of the 
 Covenant retained a certain place in the prophet's mind. 
 Similarly in xxii. 8, 9 (but in a more doubtful context: 
 = Deut. xxix. 23 f.), the fate of Jerusalem is ascribed 
 by the nations to the fact that the people have ' forsaken 
 the covenant of Yahwe their God, and worshipped 
 other gods.' In xiv. 21, the people under the shadow of 
 some great calamity implore Yahwe to remember and 
 not break His Covenant with them, a testimony perhaps 
 rather to the popular belief than to that of Jeremiah. 
 Lastly, ch. xxxiv. 1 3 is a clear and important reference 
 to the Mosaic Covenant; and the only pertinent ob- 
 jection that can be urged against it is that being taken 
 (probably) from the narrative of Baruch it does not 
 necessarily reproduce the ipsissima verba of Jeremiah. 
 In all these cases the prophet is dealing with breaches 
 of the covenant; and it is conceivable that with the 
 failure of Deuteronomy staring him in the face he 
 might have thrown his indictment into this form without 
 attaching much intrinsic value to the idea. The remain- 
 ing passages all refer to the New Covenant; but with the 
 exception of the classical locus in ch. xxxi they are all of 
 very doubtful originality (xxxii. 40, xxxiii. 20, 2 1,25,!. 5).
 
 324 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 It is thus a very slender line of proof-texts which 
 leads from the covenant of Josiah to the anticipation of 
 a New Covenant as the permanent form of religion in 
 the future. Is it sufficient to show that the idea was a 
 living principle of Jeremiah's teaching, so that out of 
 it could have sprung his general conception of the 
 relation between God and His people? To put the 
 question in that form is almost to invite a negative 
 answer. It is not, however, altogether a matter of proof- 
 texts, but much more of affinities of thought between 
 the teaching of Jeremiah and the circle of ideas to 
 which the Covenant belongs. And such affinities appear 
 to exist in his later prophecy. The most distinct is 
 contained in the phrase ' I will be a God to them, and 
 they shall be to me a people,' which is the specific 
 formula of the Covenant, and (with variations) occurs 
 not only in ch. xi. 4, but also in vii. 23, xxiv. 7, xxxi. 
 33, [xxx. 22, xxxi. i, xxxii. 38]. Although the last 
 three instances may be secondary, the genuineness of 
 vii. 23, xxiv. 7, if not xi. 4, cannot reasonably be 
 questioned, and there is no justification for regarding 
 the formula as in itself a mark of Deuteronomic 
 editorship. Again, the representation of the land of 
 Canaan as a gift to the nation or to the fathers is a 
 constant element in the Covenant conception, and is 
 found in passages which we need not hesitate to 
 attribute to Jeremiah (vii. 7, xvii. 4, xxiv. 10, xxv. 5 
 [doubtful: iii. 18, xii. 14, xvi. 15, xxx. 3, xxxii. 22, 
 xxxv. 1 5]). Once more, the obligation of obedience 
 listening to the words or the Tora of Yahwe as a 
 condition of well-being, is frequently emphasised in the 
 book, and has at least an affinity with the idea of the 
 Covenant. To assign these features wholly to the 
 Deuteronomic redaction as is done by some writers, is 
 really to prejudge the issue with which we are occupied, 
 besides overlooking the probability that the editors
 
 xvm] IV. THE NEW COVENANT 325 
 
 must have found some point of contact for their 
 phraseology in the actual words of the prophet. 
 
 The reluctance of many recent writers to admit that 
 Jeremiah was influenced by the notion of the Covenant 
 proceeds largely from a true perception of its inadequacy 
 to express the deeper elements in his thought and 
 experience. If anything is vital in Jeremiah, it is his 
 experience of religion as immediate fellowship with 
 God, and his conviction that the reality of it consists in 
 a right inward disposition, in the instinctive response 
 of the heart to the revelation of God. The Covenant, 
 on the contrary, only establishes an external relation: 
 the two parties standing over against each other, with 
 nothing to unite them except a legal obligation. It 
 represents a view of religion which was natural and 
 beneficial in the early history of Israel, but could only 
 produce a false sense of security in the age of Deutero- 
 nomy. How can we suppose that such a representation 
 was accepted by the man whose constant effort was (in 
 the words of Dr Davidson) 'to draw men's minds away 
 from all that was external sacrifices, Temple, ark and 
 law-book to that which was inward and real'? The 
 objection is weighty, and would be decisive against the 
 contention that the whole of Jeremiah's theology moves 
 within the circle of the Covenant-idea. It is certain that 
 his personal piety could never have expressed itself in 
 terms of a covenant between him and God, and equally 
 true that the religious instinct which he conceived to 
 be native to the human soul, and which he desired to 
 see liberated from the fetters of evil custom in the 
 hearts of his countrymen, was incapable of embodiment 
 in the forms of a statutory and dissoluble relationship. 
 
 But the difficulty disappears when we observe that 
 the idea is used by Jeremiah only when speaking of 
 religion as a national institution. It is a framework into 
 which is fitted, not his whole view of religion, but only
 
 326 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 his view of the relation between Yahwe and Israel as a 
 people. Now this national aspect of religion presented 
 a problem from the point of view which the prophets, 
 and Jeremiah in particular, had reached. In his early 
 poems Jeremiah had dealt with it on the lines of poetic 
 analogy, in the personification of Israel as formerly the 
 devoted bride, but now the unfaithful and adulterous 
 wife, of Yahwe. But it must have become plain to him 
 that this representation of Israel as an ideal unity was 
 inadequate to the practical situation with which he was 
 faced. The conception of Israel as a moral personality, 
 though true to the larger issues of national destiny, and 
 therefore never abandoned by Jeremiah, failed to bring 
 home to the individual his own responsibility for the 
 apostasy of the people. It was as if there were a ' con- 
 spiracy' to thwart the purpose of Yahwe (xi. 9, 10); 
 but the root of that conspiracy was in the perversity of 
 the individual will. The idea of the Covenant afforded 
 a certain relief from this embarrassment. It was given 
 by the facts of history 1 and, as the initiative of the 
 Deuteronomists showed, it was capable of practical 
 application to the needs of the present. And while it 
 conserved the national principle in religion, it never- 
 theless individualised men, laying on each man's 
 conscience the duty which God required of him as a 
 member of the covenant people. Whether Jeremiah 
 approved of the Deuteronomic covenant or not there is 
 nothing in his teaching antagonistic to the idea as a 
 form in which Israel's relation to Yahwe might be 
 expressed. It is perhaps not too much to say that it 
 was the necessary transition from the purely national 
 view of religion with which he started to the implicit 
 
 1 'Neither to the Deuteronomist nor to Jeremiah is the Covenant the 
 direct content of immediate faith; to both it reflects a historic knowledge 
 of the origin of the relation between Yahwe and the people of Israel' 
 (Duhm, TheoL d. Pr. p. 237).
 
 xvm] IV. THE NEW COVENANT 327 
 
 individualism which is characteristic of his mature 
 reflexion. 
 
 These considerations make it credible that the con- 
 ception of Israel's relation to God as founded on a 
 historic covenant occupies a real, though not all- 
 inclusive, place in the theology of Jeremiah. From this 
 it is but a step to the anticipation of a New Covenant. 
 It is clear from many passages that he was profoundly 
 exercised by the failure of the national religion. He 
 sets this failure 'in all possible lights' (Davidson): it is 
 to him something inexplicable and frightful. He con- 
 trasts it with the stedfastness of the heathen religions 
 (ii. 1 1), nay even with the fidelity of the Rechabites to 
 their tribal code (xxxv. 14). He marvels that his people 
 should forsake the Fountain of living water for the 
 broken cisterns of an unreal faith; that they should be 
 capable of for ever falling without rising again; that 
 they are so destitute of the instinct that draws man to 
 God. It is a monstrous thing that the virgin Israel has 
 done in forgetting God and worshipping vanity (xviii. 
 1 3 ff.). It is true that he explains the portent by the 
 inveterate sinful propensity of the people, but he must 
 surely have been conscious that that was not the last 
 word. The heart might be 'desperately sick,' but it was 
 not naturally depraved; the spell of evil habit might be 
 too strong for the human will to break (xiii. 23), but it 
 could not destroy the essential affinity of man's nature 
 with the divine. The very fact that evil habit had gained 
 such an ascendancy in the life of the nation that it had 
 to be consumed in the fire of judgment, pointed to 
 some inherent defect in the old dispensation, which 
 made it an ineffective .means of communion between 
 the nation and its God. The only hope for the future 
 lay in a readjustment of relations between Yahwe and 
 Israel in a New Covenant, established, as the writer 
 to the Hebrews puts it, 'on better promises.'
 
 328 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 By a New Covenant, then, Jeremiah means a new 
 religious relationship; and we have now to examine 
 wherein the novelty of that relationship consists. We 
 do not know for certain in what precise terms Jeremiah 
 would have described the Mosaic covenant. The only 
 explicit statement is in ch. xi. i 8; and we have seen 
 reason to surmise that these verses have been freely 
 expanded by Deuteronomic editors. A comparison with 
 other passages 1 , however, yields the following features 
 as constituents of the conception: (i) The covenant 
 formula is * I will be to them a God, and they shall be to 
 me a people.' (ii) There are conditions to be fulfilled 
 by Israel, viz. (a) exclusive allegiance to Yahwe, 
 (^) obedience to His will as expressed in His Law 
 (T6ra\ and in the continuous revelation of prophecy, 
 (iii) The promises on the part of Yahwe are (a) to treat 
 Israel as His peculiar people, and (<) to secure it in the 
 possession of the land of Canaan. It will be seen that if 
 this is a correct account of Jeremiah's conception of the 
 Mosaic covenant, it is identical with that of the writers 
 of Deuteronomy : that is, it agrees with the ideas of the 
 circle from which he appears to have borrowed the 
 notion. 
 
 The contrast between the Old Covenant and the 
 New is set forth in the great prophecy of ch. xxxi, 
 which I will now quote in full : 
 
 3* Lo, the time is coming, saith Yahwe, when I will make 
 with the House of Israel [and the House of JudahJ a New 
 Covenant. 3 2 Not like the covenant which I made with their 
 fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the 
 land of Egypt; seeing that they have broken My covenant, and 
 I have rejected them, saith Yahwe. 33 But this is the Covenant 
 which I will make with the House of Israel after these days, 
 saith Yahwe: I put My Tor a in their inward part, and write 
 it in their heart; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be 
 1 Ch. vii. 2, 7, 23, xi. 15, (xiii. 10), (iii. 14), (xvi. 15), xvii. 4.
 
 xvmj IV. THE NEW COVENANT 329 
 
 to Me a people. 34 And they shall no longer need to teach one 
 another, and every man his neighbour, to know Yahwe; but all 
 shall know Me, from the least to the greatest, saith Yahwe; for 
 I will pardon their guilt, and remember their sins no more. 
 
 It will be seen first of all that in two respects the New 
 Covenant is simply a renewal of the Old. First, the 
 principle of nationalism is carried over from the old 
 dispensation to the New : the covenant is made with the 
 House of Israel [and the House of Judah]. Again, the 
 form of the New Covenant is identical with that of the 
 Old : ' I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me 
 a people,' a formula, indeed, which is capable of no 
 enlargement, but only of a fuller realisation. The dis- 
 tinction of the New Covenant, therefore, is that it 
 provides the conditions which make fellowship with 
 God real. As Vatke has expressed it, the difference lies 
 ' not in the content of the covenant, but on the side of 
 reality^ of 'subjectivity'' (Eiblische Theologie, p. 526; quoted 
 by Kraetschmar, Die Bundesvorstellung im A.T. p. 159). 
 The ideal which the Old Covenant failed to make good 
 will be realised under the New. 
 
 What, then, are the positive features of the religious 
 relationship established by the New Covenant? There 
 are three: (i) Inwardness: 'I will put My law in their 
 inward part'; (2) Individualism: 'all shall know Me'; 
 (3) Forgiveness of sins : ' their sins I will remember no 
 more.' Now, all these are indispensable conditions of 
 true fellowship with God; but in the present connexion 
 the last two, which follow the covenant formula, appear 
 to have a secondary emphasis. The second is an ex- 
 pansion or corollary of the first; and the third, intro- 
 duced by 'For,' seems to characterise the whole rela- 
 tionship as founded on reconciliation with God. The 
 central truth, therefore, on which the emphasis of the 
 prophecy lies, is the inwardness of true religion the 
 spiritual illumination of the individual mind and
 
 330 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 conscience, and the doing of the will of God from a 
 spontaneous impulse of the renewed heart. To Christian 
 theology the promise has meant nothing less than this, 
 and the prophecy of the New Covenant has therefore 
 been regarded as one of the profoundest anticipations 
 of the perfect religion that the Old Testament contains. 
 
 The objections to this view of the passage are stated 
 with his usual perspicacity and incisiveness by Professor 
 Duhm. After remarking that if the words were written 
 by Jeremiah they would be of the highest importance 
 as setting forth the contrast between the prophetic and 
 the Deuteronomic conceptions of religion, Duhm pro- 
 ceeds to argue that they have no such significance. They 
 betray no consciousness of the need for a higher kind 
 of religion. If that had been in the mind of the unknown 
 author, he would have spoken of a new Tora rather than 
 of a new Bertth or Covenant a Tora which in virtue 
 of its essentially different content and character would 
 be better fitted than the old to be written on the heart. 
 Since he says nothing of this we must assume that he 
 is thinking only of the old law, with all its ritual pre- 
 scriptions about clean and unclean foods, external 
 holiness, and so forth; and when he speaks of it as 
 written in the inward part he simply means that every 
 Jew will know it by heart, and not at second hand 
 through the instruction of professional teachers. Of a 
 higher revelation of God, of personal communion with 
 God, or of a regenerate heart in the sense of Christianity, 
 Duhm finds in the passage no suggestion whatever. 
 
 Now quite possibly this is the interpretation which 
 we should be obliged to put on the prophecy if we 
 regard it as a product of post-Exilic Judaism. But is it 
 a fair and natural explanation of its language and the 
 sequence of its thought? On the contrary it appears to 
 me that it empties its terms of their proper force and 
 significance. Duhm's most fundamental argument lies
 
 xvm] IV. THE NEW COVENANT 331 
 
 in the assertion that if the passage had any meaning 
 worthy of Jeremiah it must have promised a new Tora. 
 But if it was not written by Jeremiah, it is very difficult 
 to see why the legalist who wrote it should speak even 
 of a new Berith. The old covenant surely afforded scope 
 for the memorising of the old law to any conceivable 
 extent (see Deut. vi. 6 ff.). Committing to memory is 
 after all a purely human exercise, whereas what is 
 promised in the text is a divine operation on the hearts 
 of men. Moreover, learning by heart does not supersede 
 the necessity for human instructors, so that the antithesis 
 between w. 33 a and 34 a becomes meaningless. The 
 antithesis really implied in the language is between an 
 external law, written in a book or on tables of stone, and 
 the dictates of the inward moral sense informed by true 
 knowledge of God. To 'know Yahwe' (v. 34) and to 
 have His revelation written on the heart (v. 33) are the 
 same thing; and the weakness of the old dispensation 
 was that the mere inculcation of external precepts by 
 priests or teachers or parents failed to reach the springs 
 of action, and to produce that knowledge of God as the 
 lover of mercy, righteousness and justice (ch. ix. 23 [24]) 
 which makes His will the guiding principle of the life. 
 If this is not to create a new heart in the Christian sense, 
 it is only because the figure employed is inadequate to 
 express the fulness of the idea which the writer has in 
 his mind. And to ask, as Duhm does, why God did not 
 provide for this in the first covenant is surely an 
 astonishing lapse from the historical view of religion, 
 which has had no more brilliant exponent than Duhm 
 himself. 
 
 A word or two may be added on the contention that 
 this implies a new revelation a new Tora and that 
 no such expectation is expressed in the prophecy. I 
 venture to think that this objection is met by an under- 
 standing of the sense in which Jeremiah (and perhaps
 
 332 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 the prophets generally) use the word Tord. I hazard the 
 suggestion that this is closely analogous to the manner 
 in which Jesus speaks of the law as in essence eternal 
 and immutable, but in form imperfect and needing to 
 be 'fulfilled' and in part abrogated. To Jeremiah the 
 true Tord of Yahwe is not Deuteronomy nor any 
 written code, nor priestly oracle, nor prophetic message, 
 but something which has been partly expressed in all 
 these ways and yet transcends them all the revelation 
 of the essential ethical will of God. Berith and Tord are 
 related to each other as form and content. The old 
 covenant was based on an imperfect manifestation of 
 the law of God in the form of external commands; the 
 New Covenant will be established by a better revelation 
 of that will in the spirit of man. If this be a true repre- 
 sentation of Jeremiah's attitude to the Tord, and if 
 Jeremiah be the author of the verses before us, there 
 was no occasion to announce a new law capable of being 
 engraved on the heart in a better way than committing 
 it to memory. The Tord of Yahwe is the living principle 
 of religion which is ever new, which exists perfectly in 
 the mind of God, and is therefore capable of being 
 reproduced in the minds of men who 'know Yahwe' in 
 spirit and in truth. 
 
 On the view which I have tried to expound the high 
 importance assigned to the passage in the New Testa- 
 ment (Heb. viii. 8-12, x. i6f.; Rom. xi. 27; Mat. 
 xxvi. 28; Luke xxii. 20, etc.) an estimate endorsed in 
 the main by the consensus of Christian scholarship is 
 amply vindicated. It is the announcement of a new and 
 final stage in the manifestation of God's purpose of 
 redemption, at which His gracious relation to His 
 people will be realised in a perfect fellowship of heart 
 and will, based on the forgiveness of sins. It must have 
 been written by Jeremiah, and is rightly regarded as 
 his most noteworthy contribution to the ideal religion
 
 xvm] IV. THE NEW COVENANT 333 
 
 of the future. In it we find a synthesis of the two 
 tendencies which we have seen to run through his 
 eschatological conceptions : on the one hand his clinging 
 to the national idea as the only form in which the 
 religious community was conceivable to him; and on 
 the other hand the conception of religion as direct 
 contact between the individual soul and God. Both are 
 represented in the New Covenant; it is a national 
 covenant, made with the house of Israel; and at the 
 same time it is individual, resting on the possession by 
 each member of the community of personal knowledge 
 of God. This no doubt involves a formal incongruity, 
 but it is one which runs through the whole of the Old 
 Testament, and belongs to the inherent limitations of 
 the old dispensation. The prophet has to put new wine 
 into old bottles. In terms of the covenant he has to 
 express truth which transcends the covenant idea, and 
 cannot be adequately embodied in its forms. The whole 
 notion of a compact between God and man, which was 
 the prevalent view of religion in the age of Jeremiah, 
 is broken through by the promise of an intimate union 
 of mind and will brought about by God Himself, and 
 represented here as the writing of His law on the heart. 
 The real nature of this divine operation on the human 
 soul Jeremiah probably could not have explained. He 
 had learned by experience the need of it, if religion was 
 to be; and his faith was stedfast that the creative power 
 of God would effect the renewal, and as he says in 
 another place, give the people a heart to know Him 
 (xxiv. 7). 
 
 It may be but one aspect of the perfect religion that 
 is here set forth, its inwardness, but that aspect is 
 fundamental. The individualism of Christianity is not 
 a secondary and incidental feature : it is of the essence 
 of the Gospel. It affirms the infinite value of the in- 
 dividual soul, its potential freedom from the realm of
 
 334 THE NEW COVENANT [CH. xvm 
 
 nature and the environment of evil into which it is 
 born, and its capacity for realising that freedom in 
 communion with the Father of spirits. Something of 
 this Jeremiah had learned in his own life; and if he saw 
 but dimly, he perceived that what religion was to him 
 it must be to all men the response of the heart to the 
 voice of God within. The vision of an ideal community 
 with a right mind towards God he held in common 
 with all the prophets, and like them he conceived it as 
 a restored and purified Israel. His peculiar contribution 
 to the prophetic hope is the thought of a direct action 
 of God on the heart of each Israelite, bringing it into 
 harmony with His own character and will. He may not 
 have seen that this thought must burst the bond of 
 nationality, and be fulfilled in an invisible fellowship of 
 spirits based on that knowledge of God which he knew 
 to be the ultimate reality of religion. But in projecting 
 his own personal experience into the future as the form 
 which true religion must assume universally, he threw 
 a bright beam of light across the ages; and it falls at 
 last on One who is the Yea and the Amen to all the 
 promises of God on Jesus the Mediator of the New 
 Covenant, and the Author of eternal salvation.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 
 
 WHAT remains to be told of the history of Jere- 
 miah seems to set the seal of failure on the work 
 of his life. We see the prophet engaged in a last hopeless 
 protest against the unbelief and superstition which 
 permeated every fibre of the popular sentiment, and 
 found even in national disaster a fresh stimulus to its 
 vitality. The record is doubly melancholy when we 
 contrast it with the bright anticipations which he had 
 cherished of a new people of God arising on the founda- 
 tion of the good work done by Gedaliah at Mizpah. 
 Like Dante at the outset of his pilgrimage, he had seen 
 near at hand the sunlit summit of the 'delectable mount' 
 of an earthly kingdom of righteousness and peace, but 
 when he essayed to climb its slope he found his way 
 impeded by the 'peaceless beast' of his countrymen's 
 unregenerate mind, which thrust him back into the 
 darkness from which he had emerged 1 . In very truth 
 
 i Inferno, Canto i, 11. 13-18, 55-60: 
 
 Ma poi ch' io fui al pie d' un colle giunto, 
 La dove terminava quella valle 
 Che m' avea di paura il cor compunto, 
 Guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle 
 Vestite gia de' raggi del pianeta 
 Che mena dritto altrui per ogni calle. 
 ****** 
 
 E quale e quei che voluntieri acquista, 
 E giugne il tempo che perder lo face, 
 Che in tutt' i suoi pensier piange e s' attrista : 
 
 Tal me fece la bestia senza pace, 
 
 Che venendomi incontro, a poco a poco 
 Mi ripingeva la, dove il Sol tace.
 
 336 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH [CH. 
 
 it was only by way of the eternal world that Jeremiah 
 could enter on the fruition of his hopes. 
 
 The turning-point in his relations with the com- 
 munity whose fortunes he had so willingly shared was 
 the resolve of its leaders to migrate to Egypt. This, we 
 have seen, was their almost instinctive impulse as soon 
 as they realised the probable consequences of the 
 assassination of the Babylonian governor in their midst. 
 If they had succeeded in capturing the murderer they 
 might have hoped to establish their innocence by hand- 
 ing him over to the strong arm of Chaldean justice; but 
 with the real criminal undetected how could they feel 
 themselves safe from Nebuchadnezzar's indiscriminate 
 vengeance ? Besides, they were weary of the incessant 
 turmoil, the harassing uncertainty of their precarious 
 existence in Palestine, and longed for a security and 
 comfort to which they had long been strangers. We 
 cannot say that such fears were groundless, or such 
 desires in themselves reprehensible. We have to consider 
 what sinful element lurked in their purpose to make it 
 the occasion of an irreparable breach between them and 
 the prophet whom they had learned to revere as the 
 inspired interpreter of the will of God to their genera- 
 tion. 
 
 It appears quite plainly that Jeremiah himself was 
 at first in some doubt regarding the propriety or 
 Tightness of the step that was meditated. When the 
 people approached him with a humble request for 
 divine guidance on the 'way that they should walk and 
 the thing that they should do' at this critical juncture 
 of their destiny, he had no answer ready. Ten days he 
 spent in prayer and meditation before the mind of God 
 was perfectly clear to him (ch. xlii. 17). It is an 
 instructive, though unique example of the process by 
 which a prophet might attain to certainty of the message 
 he was to deliver as the word of God; and it is one that
 
 xix] LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 337 
 
 lies very near to the region of common religious 
 experience. It suggests an analogy between prophetic 
 inspiration and that assurance that God has spoken to 
 the soul which comes in answer to prayer for light in 
 some perplexing situation an analogy which, even if 
 it be not complete, is perhaps the nearest that can be 
 found to the operation of the divine spirit on the mind 
 of a prophet. It may be difficult to say how far we are 
 entitled to extend this idea; but we see at least that 
 on the highest level of prophecy illumination might be 
 the result of prolonged mental conflict, and that final 
 certitude was reached in a way not essentially different 
 from that in which light dawns on the mind, or duty 
 becomes plain, in rapt spiritual communion with God. 
 We can partly understand the issues which so pro- 
 foundly exercised the mind of Jeremiah at this time, 
 and the considerations that might incline his judgment 
 in one direction or the other. This project of seeking 
 refuge in Egypt was it from God or of men ? Was it 
 in the line of Yahwe's purpose for His people, or was it 
 contrary thereto? Would it strengthen faith and true 
 religion in the hearts of the men who were yielding to 
 it, or would it mean their exclusion from the common- 
 wealth of Israel? To every Israelite the very thought 
 of a return to the land whence Yahwe had brought His 
 people at the first must have been repellent: it was a 
 reversal of the providential order of the nation's history. 
 Yet Jeremiah had taught the exiles in Babylonia that 
 their religion was independent of climate, that Yahwe 
 could be worshipped in a foreign land as truly as at 
 Jerusalem. Might not that which was true of compulsory 
 exile in Babylon be equally true of a voluntary exile in 
 Egypt? Was not Yahwe as near to those who sought 
 Him with all their heart in Egypt as in Palestine ? But 
 no! Egypt was not Babylon, nor were the men who 
 consulted him of a kind to hold fast their faith when 
 
 S.P.R.
 
 338 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH [CH. 
 
 deprived of its outward symbols and traditional associ- 
 ations. It was a settled conviction of Jeremiah's later 
 ministry that the Babylonian empire was the power 
 ordained by Yahwe for the maintenance of civil order 
 in the world, and his belief in the character of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar assured him that he would act worthily of his 
 high mission, and would show mercy to them and 
 reinstate them in their possessions, if they remained 
 under his rule. To seek safety beyond the pale of the 
 great world-empire was to flee from the presence of 
 Yahwe, and renounce the hope of a place in His 
 kingdom. The men who did not perceive this were 
 blind to the signs of the times, and deaf to the voice of 
 prophecy. The purpose they had formed was rooted in 
 unbelief, in distrust of Yahwe's power to protect them, 
 and indifference to His claim on their allegiance. As 
 the issues gradually cleared themselves in the prophet's 
 mind he came to see that more than material interests 
 were at stake in the matter submitted to him. The men 
 who proposed to forsake the land were on the point of 
 forfeiting their religious heritage. If they persisted in 
 their intention not only would the good work begun 
 under Gedaliah be undone, but they themselves would 
 be lost to the cause of Yahwe and the future of Israel. 
 When the answer came it was clear and peremptory. 
 To abide in the land, trusting to the promise of Yahwe 
 and the clemency of the king of Babylon, was the 
 course of safety and of duty; to go down to Egypt was an 
 act of apostasy and rebellion, which would be punished 
 by all the evils they sought to escape. But meanwhile 
 an opposite process of conviction had been going on 
 in the minds of the fugitives. There is no reason to 
 question the sincerity of their solemn promise to yield 
 implicit obedience to the word of the Lord, whether it 
 were in accordance with their wishes or not (ch. xlii. 
 5 f.). But as the days passed, and no answer was received,
 
 xix] LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 339 
 
 they became so sure of the tightness of the step they 
 contemplated that nothing would persuade them that 
 an adverse decision was an authentic oracle of Yahwe. 
 Moreover they suspected that Baruch was bringing 
 pressure to bear on the prophet, and swaying him in a 
 direction opposed to the opinion of the majority. So 
 when Jeremiah announced to the assembled community 
 the message he had received, he encountered a hard- 
 faced resistance against which he could make no 
 headway. The spokesmen of the assembly boldly 
 charged him with falsehood, in trying to palm off as a 
 divine communication the policy of Baruch the son of 
 Neriah. This interesting and unexpected tribute to the 
 influence of Jeremiah's self-effacing biographer led 
 Canon Cheyne to conjecture that Baruch had latterly 
 gained an undue ascendancy over his master, obscuring 
 with worldly wisdom his communion with his God, and 
 deflecting his mind from its better intuitions by the 
 false expectation that under Gedaliah Israel as a nation 
 could yet be built up in its own land 1 . There is no 
 evidence to support so sweeping a conclusion, although 
 there is enough to show that Baruch was a person of 
 more consideration and force of character than we 
 should have gathered from his own modest pages. It 
 may well have been that by his zeal and activity in the 
 service of the now aged prophet he had of late taken a 
 prominent part in public affairs, and had created the 
 erroneous impression that he was the more energetic 
 personality of the two. At all events it now suited the 
 purpose of the self-willed captains to put on him the 
 responsibility for an oracle which they were determined 
 to disobey. Their minds were already made up; and 
 without further parley they gathered their company 
 together, and set out for Egypt, taking Jeremiah and 
 Baruch with them. 
 
 * Jeremiah: his Life and Times, pp. 191 f. 
 
 a* ^
 
 340 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH [CH. 
 
 We are told nothing, and can imagine little, of the 
 reception which this miserable band of Jewish refugees 
 met in the land of the Pharaohs, or of their manner of 
 life there, or even how long they were able to maintain 
 a separate existence. The interest of the narrative is 
 concentrated entirely on Jeremiah's attitude to his 
 expatriated countrymen, and is restricted to two inci- 
 dents, both of which must have taken place soon after 
 the migration. Two illusions appear to have sustained 
 the spirit of the leaders in their headstrong and hazardous 
 adventure. One was that in Egypt they would be beyond 
 the reach of Nebuchadnezzar's vengeance, under the 
 protection of a friendly and powerful monarch. The 
 other was that they could still remain true to the religion 
 of their fathers why else did they compel Yahwe's 
 greatest prophet to accompany them? In the two 
 scenes recorded by Baruch we seem to see Jeremiah 
 setting himself to shatter these illusions, one after the 
 other. 
 
 On the first (ch. xliii. 813) we need not dwell at 
 great length. It was apparently a night-scene 1 , enacted 
 in front of the royal palace at Tahpanhes or Daphnai, 
 the frontier fortress where the wanderers first found a 
 resting-place on Egyptian soil. In presence of a few 
 Jewish men, Jeremiah is directed to perform a singular 
 action. He is to take great stones and bury them secretly 
 at the entrance of the palace. He is then to announce 
 that a day will come when the dreaded Nebuchadnezzar 
 will set up his throne over these very stones as the 
 conqueror of Egypt. It is a symbolical prophecy of the 
 invasion of Egypt by the king of Babylon from whom 
 his hearers had thought themselves secure. He will 
 
 1 So at least if with the Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus and 
 Theodotion, and the Vulgate we read 1073, 'in secrecy,' instead of the 
 
 unintelligible p7Jb3 D?^3 of the Massoretic text. See the com- 
 mentaries.
 
 xix] LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 341 
 
 ransack the land of Egypt as easily as a shepherd clears 
 his sheepskin cloak of vermin, and having finished his 
 work he will retire in safety. It did not require great 
 political knowledge to foresee that a conflict between 
 the two great powers was inevitable in the near future, 
 or to tell on which side the victory would lie. The same 
 expectation was entertained and more definitely ex- 
 pressed by Ezekiel in an oracle dated about the year 
 570 B.C. (Ezek. xxix. 1720). The predictions seem to 
 have been partially fulfilled within the lifetime of some 
 of Jeremiah's hearers, though not till after the prophet 
 himself had passed from the scene. Obscure references 
 in both Babylonian and Egyptian inscriptions combine 
 to make it probable that a Babylonian invasion of Egypt 
 took place in the year 568, in which the land was 
 ravaged as far as the southern frontier at Syene (Ezek. 
 xxix. lo) 1 . 
 
 The second incident requires closer study, both for 
 its intrinsic religious importance, and because of the 
 difficulty of unravelling the situation presented to us 
 in ch. xliv. As it stands it reads at first like an encyclical 
 written by the prophet to all the Jewish residents in 
 Egypt, from Migdol and Tahpanhes in the north, to 
 Memphis in the centre, and Pathros or Upper Egypt 
 in the south. The purpose of the letter seems to be to 
 drive home the lesson of the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 and announce the extinction of the remnant which 
 perpetuated in- Egypt the iniquities of their forefathers. 
 There is nothing incredible in the supposition that 
 numerous Jewish settlements were already scattered 
 over this wide area. But when we reach v. 15 we find 
 that the words are spoken to a vast concourse of Jews 
 assembled in one place, and this narrows itself down 
 further to an altercation between Jeremiah and the 
 
 * Meyer, Geschichte des Aherthums (1884), p. 497; Winckler, 
 Geschichte Babyloniens und dssyrierts (i 892), pp. 312 f.
 
 342 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH [CH. 
 
 women of the assembly, who hotly asserted their deter- 
 mination to return to the worship of the Queen of 
 Heaven in fulfilment of a vow which they had made. 
 It might not be altogether impossible to effect a rough 
 harmony of these discordant indications, by imagining 
 a great representative gathering of Jews from all parts 
 of Egypt, met to celebrate the resuscitation of the cult 
 of the Queen of Heaven, on which the female element 
 among them had set its mind. But even with that 
 assumption it would be difficult to read the chapter as 
 the composition of a single author. The diffuse homiletic 
 style which pervades the chapter bears the marks of 
 literary origin, and is ill-suited to the requirements of 
 oral address under such circumstances as are suggested; 
 and the abrupt introduction of the women with their 
 favourite form of idolatry in v. 15 throws the whole 
 scene into confusion. Recent expositors are agreed that 
 the passage has suffered expansion and consequent 
 modification at the hands of Jeremiah's editors, although 
 the extent of these editorial operations is variously 
 estimated by different writers. The most drastic, but 
 at the same time the most satisfying, solution seems to 
 be that given by Erbt, who finds the genuine historical 
 kernel of the narrative in the passage dealing with the 
 worship of the Queen of Heaven, which was afterwards 
 converted by amplification into an oracle against 
 Egyptian Judaism as a whole. Of the two speeches put 
 into the mouth of Jeremiah he rejects the first (w. 
 20-23), and finds the real answer of the prophet to the 
 argument of the women in w. 2428, which, with some 
 alterations of text he reduces to metrical form (see 
 below, p. 345)*. 
 
 1 In detail Erbt's analysis (which is adopted in the main by Schmidt) 
 is nearly as follows: He assigns to the redaction the whole of vv. 114, 
 except the heading, and the second half of v. 4 ('Do not this abominable 
 thing which I hate'), which he retains as the expostulation of Jeremiah
 
 xix] LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 343 
 
 There is no more vivid illustration in the Old 
 Testament of the deep-seated antagonism between the 
 prophetic and the popular interpretations of providence 
 than this remarkable dialogue. It proves the utter 
 failure of the Deuteronomic reformation to reach the 
 heart of the people. The worship of the Queen of 
 Heaven the goddess Ishtar, represented by the planet 
 Venus was a specifically Babylonian form of idolatry 
 which had come into vogue in the reign of Manasseh, 
 and had laid a firm hold on the imagination especially 
 of the women of Judah. Its interesting rites had often 
 been witnessed by Jeremiah in the cities of Judah and 
 the streets of Jerusalem (ch. vii. 1 7 f.). It must have 
 been suppressed during the later years of Josiah; 
 whether it had been restored in the reaction under 
 Jehoiakim we do not know. At all events it must have 
 been to the earlier period that the women referred when 
 they alleged that all the disasters which had overtaken 
 the State dated from the time when this cult was 
 abandoned (vv. 1 7 f.). Perhaps it is taking a too serious 
 
 to which the women retort in vv. 1 5 f. In vv. 15-19 the only material 
 alteration is the clearing from v. 1 5 of the misleading clauses 'all the 
 men who knew that their wives sacrificed to other gods, and all,' and 
 'and all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt in Pathros'; thus 
 making the women the only speakers in vv. 16-19. Similarly, in v. 24 
 he deletes (with LXX) 'all Judah which is in the land of Egypt'; and 
 in v. 25 reads (again with LXX) 'Ye women' instead of 'Ye and your 
 wives,' and (besides some minor changes) turns the masculine suffixes 
 into feminine in what follows. V. 26 is reduced to its last clause, 'My 
 name shall no more be in the mouth of any man of Judah, saying "As 
 Yahwe liveth," in all the land of Egypt.' Vv. 27 and 28 a are omitted 
 entirely, and in 28 b the words 'that are come into the land of Egypt 
 to sojourn there,' and at the end 'Mine or theirs' (LXX). Vv. 29, 30 
 can have formed no part of the original address. See Erbt, Jeremia 
 u. s. Zeit, pp. 77 ff., 107, and compare Schmidt, Die grossea Propheten, 
 pp. 372 f. Many of these emendations and excisions are supported by 
 other scholars (Stade, Duhm, Cornill, etc.), and the gain in clearness is 
 unmistakable.
 
 344 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH [CH. 
 
 view of this feminine theology to suppose that it 
 involves a belief in the Queen of Heaven as a more 
 potent deity than Yahwe, or a deliberate repudiation of 
 the national God. What the women objected to was not 
 the acknowledgment of Yahwe as the supreme God, 
 but only that exclusive worship of Him which the 
 prophets and Deuteronomy demanded and which had 
 made illegal an innocent and picturesque piece of ritual 
 which experience had now shown to be necessary for 
 the welfare of the State. That they could look back to 
 the reign of Manasseh as a time of ease and happiness 
 in the nation's history evinces a depth of religious 
 callousness, an aloofness from the struggles and suffer- 
 ings of the prophetic party at that time, which we might 
 expect to find in the secluded upper coteries of society 
 and nowhere else. Since we read of royal princesses who 
 had been left in charge of Gedaliah and been escorted 
 to Egypt by Johanan and his men of war (ch. xli. 10, 
 xliii. 6), we may imagine that these court ladies were 
 chiefly influential in starting this paganising movement 
 among the women of the caravan. Probably on the way 
 to Egypt, they had registered the vow to which they 
 here allude, to return to the worship of their favourite 
 goddess at the first opportunity and it would seem from 
 Jeremiah's words to them that he had interrupted them 
 in the act of carrying out their resolution. He would 
 see once more 'the children gathering wood, and the 
 fathers kindling the fire, and the women kneading the 
 dough, to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven' (ch. 
 vii. 1 8). 
 
 Read in the light of this dramatic situation, the words 
 of Jeremiah are charged with terrible import. He has 
 tried to dissuade the women before him from carrying 
 out their purpose, and has been met with clamorous 
 and insolent defiance. He makes no further attempt to 
 expostulate with them, but with scathing irony he
 
 xix] LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 345 
 
 hands them over to their reprobate and superstitious 
 mind (vv. 25-28): 
 
 2 SThus speaks Yah we, Israel's God: 
 
 Ye women ! Ye have spoken with your mouth, 
 
 And performed it with your hands! 
 'We will assuredly fulfil our vows which we have vowed, 
 
 To burn sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven 
 
 And pour out to her libations.' 
 Hold, then, to your words, 
 
 And do according to your vows! 
 
 26 b By My great name I swear, 
 
 Saith Yahwe! 
 That My name shall no more be heard 
 
 In the mouth of any man of Judah 
 
 In all the land of Egypt 
 28 b Then shall all the remnant of Judah know 
 
 Whose word it is that stands! 
 
 The point of the oracle is the announcement of the 
 extinction of the Yahwe-religion among the Jews of 
 Egypt. Thus the second illusion cherished by the 
 leaders of the migration is dispelled by the inexorable 
 logic of the prophet. They had flattered themselves that 
 they could still hold fast to the religious inheritance of 
 their race, although they went to sojourn in a strange 
 land. They knew not what spirit they were of. Their 
 wives and daughters, with their frankly pagan pro- 
 clivities, more truly expressed the real religious attitude 
 of the community; and the men, by countenancing the 
 revival of heathen rites in their midst, had shown where 
 their sympathies lay. They drew a lesson from the late 
 disasters which was diametrically opposed to the teach- 
 ing of the prophets and the mind of God; and soon the 
 empty profession of the national faith would give place 
 to open and complete apostasy. The name of Yahwe 
 would no more be in the mouth of any Jew in the land
 
 346 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH [CH. 
 
 of Egypt. The long controversy between Yahwe and 
 Israel closes with the abandonment of His worship by 
 the last survivors of the national catastrophe. Then it 
 will be seen which of the two readings of history the 
 prophetic or the popular holds the field. They shall 
 know 'whose word stands, Mine or theirs/ 
 
 This was probably the last, as it is the last recorded, 
 public utterance of Jeremiah. In hurling the sentence 
 of final rejection against his fellow-exiles he lays down 
 his work as a prophet. Of his private feelings in these 
 closing days of his life we have perhaps a revelation in 
 what is probably the last message that has been pre- 
 served from his lips: the oracle on the faithful friend 
 of his declining years and companion of his exile, 
 Baruch the son of Neriah (ch. xlv). The passage is 
 undoubtedly very obscure in its allusions, and the date 
 is uncertain. The heading assigns it to the fourth year 
 of Jehoiakim, when Baruch is first introduced as Jere- 
 miah's amanuensis; but that notice is one that might 
 easily have been inserted by an editor who mistook the 
 writing of the prophet's biography for the writing of 
 the roll of his prophecies in 604; and the supposed 
 situation hardly does justice to the language of the 
 oracle. We do not know what fresh sorrow Baruch 
 complains of in v. 3, and still less can we conjecture 
 what personal ambition of his is rebuked in v. 5. But it 
 seems to me that we can best appreciate its tone and 
 significance if we hold that it stands in its proper 
 chronological place at the close of Baruch's biography, 
 and contains the last words of Jeremiah to his devoted 
 disciple. It reads, in short, like a farewell oracle, perhaps 
 even a death-bed charge. The last verse strongly sug- 
 gests that the friends are about to separate, and that 
 Baruch will tread a lonely and perilous path through 
 life, deprived of the guidance on which he had so long 
 leaned. The fresh grief which has desolated his heart
 
 xix] LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 347 
 
 is the prospect of separation from his beloved master; 
 and the 'great things' which he is tempted to seek for 
 himself might be a position of influence which he had 
 hoped to occupy by the side of Jeremiah in the recon- 
 struction of the new Israel. We may at all events read 
 the chapter by the help of this hypothesis, and try to 
 catch something of its sombre and chastened spirit. 
 
 1 The word which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the 
 son of Neriah, as he wrote these words in a book: 2 This is 
 Yahwe's oracle concerning thee, O Baruch: 
 3 'Thou hast said, "Ah, Woe is me! 
 
 That Yahwe adds anguish to my pain ! 
 Weary am I with sighing, 
 
 And find no rest!'" 
 4 Thus shalt thou say to him: 
 
 Thus saith Yahwe: 
 ' Behold, what I have built 
 
 That I pull down, 
 And what I have planted 
 
 That I pluck up 1 ! 
 5 And wilt thou seek great things for thyself? 
 
 Seek them not! 
 Behold, I am bringing evil on all flesh, 
 
 Saith Yahwe; 
 
 But to thee I give thy life as a prey, 
 In all places whither thou shalt go.* 
 
 If these be indeed the last words of Jeremiah, they 
 are a fitting finale to the life of incessant strife and con- 
 tention, of defeat and disappointment, the successive 
 phases of which it has been the object of these studies 
 to portray. They yield us a last glimpse into that * lake 
 of sorrow' which lay within the breast of the prophet. 
 But they are more than that. They sum up the verdict 
 of prophecy on God's dealings in mercy and judgment 
 
 i The closing words of v. 4 in the Heb., 'and that is the whole 
 earth,' are not in the LXX; and ought clearly to be omitted.
 
 348 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH [CH. 
 
 with the impenitent people of Israel. Its creation and 
 its destruction were alike the work of Yahwe of hosts, 
 the God of Israel and the God of the universe. In that 
 truth Jeremiah's faith finds anchorage, and to the end 
 he is a man 'very sure of God/ If He who formed 
 Israel from the womb had found it necessary to destroy 
 the work of His own hands, if divine patience and love 
 had failed in the effort to mould the intractable clay of 
 a nation's character into a vessel fit for the Master's 
 use, what is left for the protesting human heart but to 
 be still and know that He is God? The resources of 
 infinite wisdom and goodness cannot be exhausted; and 
 God who fulfils Himself in many ways will yet make 
 Himself known as the God of salvation to all the ends 
 of the earth. Hence, although the descent from the 
 rapturous poetry of ch. xxxi to the gloomy resignation 
 of ch. xlv be almost too painful to contemplate, we are 
 not to conclude that Jeremiah had lost hope in God or 
 in the future of His kingdom. No more could he hope 
 to see with his eyes the good of Israel, since Yahwe had 
 torn down what He had begun to build; and for him- 
 self and Baruch nothing remained but a resolute facing 
 and endurance of calamity to the uttermost. But Yahwe 
 still lived, and was ' wakeful over His word ' to build and 
 to plant, as He had been to pull down and to pluck up 
 (xxiv. 6, xxxi. 28). Jeremiah had been disappointed in 
 his recent expectation of seeing the material foundations 
 of the new kingdom of God laid in Palestine; but he 
 could still believe that its spiritual foundations would 
 be laid in a change of heart among the exiles in Baby- 
 lonia 1 , and that in God's good time all that he had 
 
 1 On the assumption that ch. xlv is a parting oracle to Baruch, Erbt 
 builds a conjecture which would bring the oracle into direct connexion 
 with Jeremiah's hopes for the Babylonian exiles. He thinks that Jeremiah 
 sent Baruch to Babylon to convey to the Jewish colony there his literary 
 testament, and that this chapter marks the termination of their long
 
 xix] LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 349 
 
 dreamed of the blessedness of Israel would be fulfilled, 
 when the people turned to Him with their whole heart. 
 Thus we leave the last great prophet of Judah, worn 
 out by the labours and sufferings of forty years, in 
 darkness though not in despair, awaiting death. It were 
 vain to attempt in closing an estimate of his character 
 and many-sided-genius, or of the value of his con- 
 tribution to the religious experience of the people of 
 Israel. From the point of view from which we have 
 mainly sought to present his life, as the culmination of 
 the prophetic movement in Israel, no fitter words could 
 be found to sum up the significance of his work than 
 Ewald's eloquent and sympathetic tribute in his History 
 of Israel, which is here quoted verbatim from Dr Estlin 
 Carpenter's translation (vol. iv, pp. 249 f.) : 
 
 This renders Jeremiah, the greatest prophet of this age, the 
 truest type throughout his whole career of the inevitable dis- 
 solution of the kingdom. Possessed of the most perfect prophetic 
 spirit of all, unstained by any perverse tendency, his noblest 
 utterances, nevertheless, fell fruitless from his lips; his worst 
 forebodings, his severest threats, were vain. Unwearied by any 
 disappointment or catastrophe, he ever collected his energies 
 afresh for simple labour at Yahwe's work; and yet at times 
 
 intercourse. 'Sein Wirken ist beendet, er ist ein alter Mann, dem 
 Scheiden nahe. Da schickt er seinen Jiinger aus, den er eben, was ihm 
 noch denkwurdig erschienen, hat aufzeichnen lassen, nach Babel an die 
 Gola. Dort soil er sein Zeuge sein, den Exulanten soil er die Hinter- 
 lassenschaft des Mannes uberbringen, der den Ausgang Judas mit seinen 
 Mahnungen, Warnungen, Drohungen und Hoffnungen begleitet hat. 
 Die allgemeine aufregung ohne Ende hat ihre besonderc Form fur 
 Baruch: fur ihn bringt sie Unruhe, gefahrvolle Wanderung und den 
 Abschied von dem greisen Meister....Er wird gliicklich nach Babel 
 gelangt sein, er hat dort die Zeugnisse von der Wirksamkeit des Propheten 
 verbreitet so dass sie uns erhalten geblieben sind. Die Trennung von 
 ihm ist Schuld daran, dass wir nichts iiber den Ausgang Jeremias wissen. 
 Baruch hat wohl selbst nichts mehr von ihm gehort' (op. cit., p. 86). 
 I agree, however, with Cornill that this original and ingenious inter- 
 pretation finds little support in the words of the oracle itself.
 
 350 LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH [CH. 
 
 bowed down by the overwhelming burden of the age, and the 
 bitter anticipation of the inevitable end of Israel's long course, 
 he almost lost the iron power and confident composure of an 
 ancient prophet, and bowed down in despair, as though under a 
 curse. Through a career of half a century he preserved and 
 increased in his own person the honour of prophetism; yet its 
 results turned out exactly opposite to Isaiah's, for his labours 
 proved less and less successful, and his own lot was one of 
 increasing sadness. Precisely similar was the decline of the whole 
 State; although it concealed within itself some mysterious higher 
 possibility, yet it ever sank more and more irretrievably into the 
 yawning abyss, beyond the power of human vicissitudes and 
 exertions to raise it again as they had done some hundred years 
 before in Isaiah's time. In Jeremiah the kingdom lost the most 
 human prophet it ever possessed. His heavy sorrows and despair, 
 his noble yet fruitless struggles, and his fall, were those of the 
 whole of prophetism, and, so far as prophetism constituted the 
 inmost life of the ancient State, those of the State itself. If any 
 pure soul could still save the State, that soul was Jeremiah's 
 whose period of greatest vigour fell in those three and twenty 
 years of its dying agony; but even for the noblest of the prophets 
 the time was now gone by, and the last great prophet and all 
 the remains of the ancient kingdom of Israel, which had been 
 preserved amid the storms of centuries, were engulfed in a 
 common ruin. 
 
 Jeremiah, as has often been said, is the prophet of a 
 dying nation; his poetry with its dominant elegiac note 
 is the swan-song both of Hebrew nationality and of 
 Hebrew prophecy. Prophecy, it is true, was destined to 
 rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the national con- 
 flagration; and in the soaring idealism of the second 
 Isaiah, and the rigorous, doctrinaire, but constructive 
 genius of Ezekiel, it evinced a power and originality 
 not unworthy of its glorious past. But the new prophecy 
 was not a revival of the old, from which nevertheless it 
 borrowed most of its light : it had a different function
 
 xix] LAST DAYS OF JEREMIAH 351 
 
 to perform, and a less penetrating message to deliver. 
 The essential task of the prophecy which reached its 
 complete development amid the death-throes of the 
 kingdom of Judah was to separate the vital truths of 
 religion from their embodiment in the institutions of a 
 decadent social organism; and its characteristic message 
 had been that Yahwe was about to break down that 
 which He had built and pluck up that which He had 
 planted. That task was finished in the work and life of 
 Jeremiah in his life even more than in his work; for 
 it was only in a tragic personal experience such as he 
 passed through that the reality of religion could be 
 apprehended and verified. Greater than all the teaching 
 of subsequent prophets in its influence on the piety of 
 following generations was the spirit of Jeremiah, which 
 breathed out on his people after his death, and bore 
 fruit in an experience of fellowship with God which 
 satisfied the deepest aspirations of the human soul. In 
 his life of unrewarded labour, of unparalleled endurance, 
 and absolute fidelity to God men even read lessons of 
 which his own writings betray no consciousness. They 
 learned from contemplation of its long tragedy a truer 
 insight into the great law of vicarious suffering, which 
 led them on to the conception of the mission of Israel 
 as the oppressed and afflicted servant of Yahwe, and 
 still further to the idea of the one perfect and sinless 
 Servant of the Lord the Man of sorrows and ac- 
 quainted with grief, the Lamb of God which taketh 
 away the sin of the world.
 
 353 
 
 SCRIPTURE PASSAGES DISCUSSED 
 OR REFERRED TO 
 
 N.B. The order of books is that of the English Bible 
 
 GENESIS 
 
 ww"wii **f\ fTT V -8\ 
 
 on A. ti 
 
 xxv. 6, 7 
 
 255, 270 
 
 
 278 
 
 NUMBERS 
 
 190 
 
 II CHRONICLES 
 
 XXXV. 21 S 
 
 238 
 
 xii 6 8 
 
 . 196 
 
 NEHEMIAH 
 vi. 10 
 
 237. 2 
 
 6 
 
 . 11 
 
 
 
 xxiv. 7.4.. ic. 16 . 
 
 . 220 
 
 PSALMS 
 Iii 10 (8) 
 
 1 AH 
 
 xxv. 3 
 
 . 59 
 
 xxxi. 16 
 
 . 59 
 
 
 I QQ 
 
 DEUTERONOMY 
 iii. g 
 
 . 134n. 
 
 ISAIAH 
 
 1 7Q 
 
 iv. 3 
 
 . 59 
 
 
 7K 
 
 6 
 
 . 103 
 
 
 1 >lQM T 
 
 v. zS. 
 
 . 99. 
 
 fttf 
 
 9O9 
 
 vi. 6ff. 
 
 . 331 
 
 
 
 ix. 9ff. 
 
 . 99n. 
 
 
 
 x. 16 
 
 . 107 
 
 
 1 fifi 
 
 
 . 5 
 
 
 
 20-22 
 
 . 173f. 
 
 xi i 8 
 
 Slfl 
 
 xxvi. 1619 
 
 . 99n. 
 
 
 1 RR 
 
 x.xviii. 69 (xxix. i) .... 
 
 
 JEREMIAH 
 
 1. A IO 
 
 25f 
 
 
 . 107 
 
 JUDGES 
 
 . 27 
 
 
 157 
 
 6, 7 
 
 24 n i 
 
 I SAMUEL 
 xxi. 8 
 
 . 237n. 2 
 
 8 
 
 210 
 
 II 14. 
 
 80ff. 
 
 
 91 n 
 
 I KINGS 
 
 
 ii. i i 
 
 
 2b, 3 
 
 64 
 
 
 
 4-13 
 
 66f., 185 
 
 
 1 aa 
 
 5 
 
 71 
 
 II KINGS 
 
 
 
 71, 827 
 
 I 7 
 
 72 
 
 14. I O 
 
 56n. i, 66 
 
 
 . 95 
 
 14. 17 
 
 44n. 3, 56n. i 
 
 
 . 100 
 
 
 
 98ft. 2 
 
 
 58, 68, 84, 321 
 7f. 
 
 
 . 127, 234 
 
 2 1 
 
 xxiv 2 ... 
 
 . 245 f. 
 
 23 ... 57n. i, 62n. i, 70 
 
 6 
 
 248 
 
 S.P. R. 
 
 
 23
 
 354 
 
 SCRIPTURE PASSAGES 
 
 JEREMIAH 
 jj 2 < 
 
 71, 3Q2. i 
 
 
 117, 143. 
 
 1620 
 
 115ff 
 
 26. 27 
 
 69f. 
 
 17 
 
 154 
 
 27 
 
 85, 130 
 
 2226 
 
 .. 38w. I, 42n. i 
 
 2 g 
 
 57 K . i, 71 
 
 2630 
 
 144 
 
 71 
 
 70. 
 
 2770 
 
 156ff., 214 
 
 
 62w i 
 
 vii. 7i c 
 
 170, 236 
 
 7 ( 
 
 70 
 
 77 
 
 170 
 
 76. 17 
 
 45 n 
 
 
 174 
 
 iii. . 
 
 79ff., 306f. 
 
 8-1 < 
 
 170ff. 
 
 T f 
 
 79f 
 
 8 
 
 174 
 
 2 
 
 58, 84 
 
 10 
 
 169 
 
 6 18 
 
 84. i 
 
 16 
 
 218 
 
 617 
 
 80f. 
 
 17, 18 
 
 145, 343L 
 
 6 
 
 84 
 
 2127 
 
 178, 182f. 
 
 12. 11 
 
 . . 81. i, 84f 
 
 7 I 
 
 62. i 
 
 I4-l8 
 
 80 
 
 74. 
 
 23 
 
 IO 2C 
 
 80f 
 
 viii. i ff. 
 
 249 
 
 21 2 C 
 
 84f., 308 
 
 4 8 
 
 119ff. 
 
 27 
 
 58 
 
 7 22, 
 8 
 
 103, 139n. i, 219 
 103f., 115, 119 
 185 
 
 iv. if 2 
 
 86M. i 
 
 7 4. 
 
 122, 150 
 
 IO, II 
 
 4. 
 
 107 
 
 17 
 
 156 
 
 e 
 
 126 
 
 1427 
 
 124ff. 
 
 f-8 
 
 35 
 
 I { 
 
 169 
 
 10 
 
 47, 49 
 
 17 
 
 125. t 
 
 17. 14. 
 
 36 
 
 zob 
 
 125w. i 
 
 17 
 
 42 
 
 ix. i8 (29) ...... 
 
 132f. 
 
 
 243 
 
 2, < (i, 6} .. 
 
 121 
 
 I{ 17 
 
 36 
 
 IO ( ll) 
 
 23 
 
 jr 
 
 126 
 
 16, i 7, 19-21 
 18 
 
 124, 128. i 
 
 IQ 21 
 
 36, 49, 126 
 
 124n. i 
 
 2726 
 
 37, 50 
 
 22, 2 7 
 
 121f. 
 
 2C 
 
 23 
 
 
 331 
 
 28 
 
 75 
 
 x. 1922 
 
 ... 38. i, 50. i 
 
 2O 
 
 37 
 
 xi. i 8 ... 9 
 
 7f., 115, 322, 328 
 98f. 
 
 7O, 71 
 
 37 
 
 i < 
 
 V. I < 
 
 . . 138 ff. 
 
 4. < 
 
 100, 101 
 
 
 68, 149, 321 
 
 6-8 
 
 lOlf. 
 
 7ff. 
 
 148, 191 
 
 9, 10 
 
 323, 326 
 
 12, 13 
 
 153 
 
 
 57. i 
 
 17 
 
 143 
 
 14. 
 
 131. i, 218 
 
 14. 
 
 154 
 
 I C. l6 
 
 167f. 
 
 2620 
 
 147 
 
 18-23 109f., 
 18. i n 
 
 201n. i, 208, 211 
 
 no 
 
 7O, 71 
 
 185 
 
 vi. i 
 
 44, 232 
 
 20 
 
 211, 213 
 
 7, 4. 
 
 42 
 
 
 211 
 
 6, 7 
 
 149 
 
 xii. i6 
 
 201. i, 208 
 
 8 
 
 244 
 
 17. C . 6 ., 
 
 lllf. 
 
 
 156, 157 
 
 9 
 
 ... 211, 213, 225- 
 
 10 
 
 153, 156 
 
 
 Ill 
 
 n 
 
 154 
 
 6 
 
 20 
 
 H 14 
 
 185 
 
 7-12 
 
 245. i
 
 SCRIPTURE PASSAGES 
 
 355 
 
 JEREMIAH 
 
 xii. 14-17 309n. i 
 
 xiii. 12-14 234n. i 
 
 15-17 244f. 
 
 18, 19 249 
 
 20-27 242f. 
 
 21 242n. 3 
 
 22 243n. i 
 
 23 121,327 
 
 24 243;i. i 
 
 xiv. 7-9 129ff. 
 
 10 129ff. 
 
 11,12 131w. i, 218 
 
 I2ff 123n. 2 
 
 13-16 ' 181. i 
 
 13 47n. i, 186 
 
 14 193, 194 
 
 17, 18 128. i, 181n. i 
 
 18 123 
 
 19-22 128n. i, 129, 131?;. i 
 
 19 169 
 
 21 130?;. i, 323 
 
 XV. 1-4 129 
 
 2, 3 123n. 2 
 
 5-9 270f. 
 
 10-21 201. r 
 
 10-18 203f. 
 
 10 210 
 
 11 212,218 
 
 12-14 204n. 
 
 15 211 
 
 16 211,212 
 
 18 212 
 
 19-21 ... 204, 213, 214, 222 
 
 19 155 
 
 xri. 1-9 22, 123, 211 
 
 9 23 
 
 19, 20 808f. 
 
 xvii. 1-3 58 
 
 9, 10 201 . i, 205 
 
 9 152, 213, 225 
 
 10 213 
 
 14-18 201n. i, 205f. 
 
 14 213 
 
 15 211,282 
 
 16 212 
 
 18 211,213 
 
 xviii. i-io 162ff. 
 
 6 163 
 
 7-10 163 
 
 13-17 133ff., 827 
 
 14 23 
 
 18-23 ... 201n. i, 206, 209 
 
 xviii. 18 210,211 
 
 20 ... 131;;. i, 212, 218 
 
 21, 22a 206. 2, 211 
 
 xix. i-xx. 6 234n. i 
 
 xix. 5 62. i 
 
 xx. i, 2 189,253 
 
 7-12 201n. i,207 ff. 
 
 7,8 210 
 
 7 212 
 
 8 211 
 
 9 154, 212, 221 
 
 10 211 
 
 n 211 
 
 12 218, 225 
 
 14-18 201n. I, 208, 209 
 
 xxi. i-io 259n. 
 
 i, 2 255 
 
 5,6 261 
 
 8, 9 258n. i, 261 ff., 262. i 
 
 xxii. 8, 9 323 
 
 10 235 
 
 13-17 18. i, 247f. 
 
 18, 19 248f. 
 
 20-22 245f. 
 
 24ff 249f. 
 
 28-30 250 
 
 xxiii. 1-4 312n. i 
 
 4 814f. 
 
 5,6 810, 811f., 318 
 
 9-n 185, 190ff. 
 
 13* H 191 
 
 15-18 191, 192, 194 
 
 21-24 1^2, 194, 198 
 
 28-32 ... 192, 198, 194, 200 
 
 29 154, 159, 192 
 
 xxiv. 251 
 
 7 88, 824, 338 
 
 xxv. 1-13 240f. 
 
 3 108 
 
 10 28 
 
 xxvi. iff 189ff. 
 
 4-6 170ff., 236 
 
 8-24 172n. i, 237n. 2 
 
 xxvii. 1-4 253 
 
 xxviii. 8, 9 192 
 
 8 29 
 
 xxix. 252, 287 ff. 
 
 3 252, 254 
 
 5-7, 11-14 287 f. 
 
 10 252, 295 
 
 i5ff 252, 288. i 
 
 23 * 191 
 
 258
 
 356 
 
 SCRIPTURE PASSAGES 
 
 JEREMIAH 
 
 XXX. 2, 3 . 
 
 5-7 
 
 .9 
 xxxi. 2-6 
 
 4~ 6 > 9 IS' 20 
 
 299 
 270 
 310 
 
 300, 304f. 
 19 
 
 15, 16 ............ 301, 305f. 
 
 18-20 ............ 301, 306ff. 
 
 20 ............... 48 
 
 21, 22 ............ 301f., 306 
 
 ............... 152 
 
 ... 122, 320ff., 328ff. 
 20, 256. i, 277, 298 f. 
 ............... 19 
 
 ............... 62n. i 
 
 ............... 237. 2 
 
 30 
 31-34 
 
 xxxii. 6 ff. 
 
 8 ............... 
 
 35 ............... 
 
 xxxiii. i ............... 
 
 ii ............... 23 
 
 15 ............... 310 
 
 xxxiv. iff ................ 255 
 
 4, 5 ............... 255, 270 
 
 8ff ................ 147,256 
 
 13 ............... 323 
 
 xxxv. 14 ............... 327 
 
 xxxvi. i, 9 ............... 237. i 
 
 2-7 ............... 78 
 
 5 ............... 237. 2 
 
 10, ii, 12 ......... 239 
 
 22 ............... 237 
 
 24 ............... 238 
 
 25 ............... 239 
 
 29 ............... 242n. i 
 
 30 ............... 248 
 
 xxxvii. 3-10 ............... 259n. 
 
 4 ............... 255 
 
 10 ............... 261 
 
 1 1-2 1 256 f., 258. i, 274. I 
 12 ............ 19, 256n. i 
 
 14 ............... 263 
 
 17-21 ............ 259w. 
 
 xxxviii. ......... 257 fT., 274n. i 
 
 2 ............... 261ff. 
 
 4 ............... 261 
 
 5 ............... 255 
 
 14-27 ............ 259. 
 
 21-23 ............ 51 
 
 22 ............... 258 
 
 xxxix. 1-14 ......... 259n., 272ff. 
 
 16-18 ............ 274. i 
 
 xl. 1-5 ......... 272, 274n. i 
 
 8 ............... 280. i 
 
 xli. 5 ............... 304 
 
 10 ............... 344 
 
 xlii. 1-7 ............... 336f. 
 
 xlii. 5, 6 
 
 338 
 
 IO-I2 
 
 277 
 
 14 
 
 282 
 
 xliii. 6 
 
 344 
 
 8-13 
 
 340f. 
 
 xliv. 
 
 341f. 
 
 1-14 
 
 342n. i 
 
 i5- J 9 
 
 343w. 
 
 25-28 
 
 345 
 
 xlv. 
 
 346f. 
 
 xlvi-li. 
 
 239n. 3, 241. i 
 
 h. 59-64 
 
 245. i 
 
 Iii. 10, ii 
 
 255, 270 
 
 30 
 
 284 
 
 EZEKIEL 
 
 
 Xvi. 20, 21, 36 ... 
 
 62. i 
 
 xvii. 22 ff 
 
 314 
 
 xx. 26, 31 
 
 62. i 
 
 xxi. 27 
 
 314 
 
 xxn. 17-22 
 
 159n. i 
 
 xxiii. 12 ff 
 
 243 
 
 37.39 
 
 62. i 
 
 xxix. 10, 17-20 
 
 341 
 
 xxxiii. 21, 24-26 
 
 283f. 
 
 32 
 
 138 
 
 xxxiv. i ff 
 
 312. i 
 
 23, 24 .. 
 
 310 
 
 xxxvii. 155 
 
 312n. i 
 
 23.24 
 
 310 
 
 HOSEA 
 
 
 "i- 5 
 
 310 
 
 iv. 6 
 
 3 
 
 H 
 
 69 
 
 19 
 
 179 
 
 v.6 
 
 179 
 
 vi. 6 
 
 179 
 
 3-5 
 
 294 
 
 10 
 
 59, 64, 71, 304 
 
 xii. 4>5(3 4) . 
 
 204. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 86 
 
 AMOS 
 
 
 11. ii 
 
 4. i 
 
 111. 2 
 
 7 
 
 iv-4, v. 4ff 
 
 179 
 
 v. 21-25 
 
 179 
 
 vii. 14 
 
 4n. i 
 
 15 
 
 4n. i, 8 
 
 MICAH 
 
 
 iii. 5-8 
 
 187 
 
 8 
 
 144 
 
 vi. 6-8 
 
 62n. i, 180
 
 SCRIPTURE PASSAGES 
 
 357 
 
 ZEPHANIAH 
 
 i. 4 Bin. 
 
 ZECHARIAH 
 
 iii. 8, vi. 12 312. i 
 
 I ESDRAS 
 
 i. z6&. 233 
 
 iii. 28 234n. i 
 
 MATTHEW 
 
 xxvi. 28 332 
 
 LUKE 
 xxii. 20 
 
 332 
 
 JOHN 
 iii. 19 
 
 162 
 
 ROMANS 
 
 xi. 27 
 
 332 
 
 HEBREWS 
 viii. 812 
 
 332 
 
 X. l6, 17 
 
 332
 
 358 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abiathar, 19 
 
 Ahaz, 62 
 
 Ahikam, 236 
 
 Amon, 25, 249 
 
 Amos, 4n., 5, yf., 28, 46, 53, 6in., 
 
 172, 179, 181, 216 
 Anathoth, i8ff., 58, 6 in., 89 f., 96, 
 
 roo, 106, iO9f., 112, 209 
 Ashguza, 4o. 
 Asshurbanipal, 24, 38, 40 
 Assyria, 24, 30, 39 ff ., 93 
 Augustine, 121 
 
 Baals, 59 ff., 6zi., 67, 70!. 
 Babylon, deportation of Jews to, 
 
 251 
 
 Balaam, 220 
 
 Baruch, 209, 231!., 237, 339, 346 ff. 
 Benjamites, 19, 44 
 Bertholet, 99 n. 
 Brown, C. R., 203 n. 
 Burney, 134 
 Buttenwieser,4., 78 n., 164*1., 172*1., 
 
 241/7. 
 
 Canaanites, 59 ff. 
 
 Carchemish, battle of, 234, 236, 244 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 135*1. 
 
 Chaldeans, 42, 127, 233, 242, 249 
 
 Charlemagne, 248 
 
 Cheyne, ii2., 339 
 
 Child-sacrifice, 62 
 
 Cimmerians, 39 ff. 
 
 'Confessions' of Jeremiah, 114, 
 
 201 ff. 
 
 Consolation, Book of, 299 
 Cornill, 20, 56*1., ii2n., 115, 126, 
 
 174, 198, 247*1., 262H., 3i2rt., etc. 
 Covenant, in Deuteronomic move- 
 
 ment, 321 ff.; Mosaic, 323, 328 
 Covenant, the New, 160, 32off. 
 Cowper, William, 132 
 
 Dante, 335 
 Darmesteter, 136*1. 
 David, 310!. 
 
 Davidson, 17, 38, 77, 96, 99f., 101, 
 
 222, 325, 327 
 Degeneracy of Popular Religion, 
 
 64 ff. 
 
 Delitzsch, 305*1. 
 Denney, 154 
 Deuteronomic Reformation, 21, 25, 
 
 90 ff., 165, 1755., 291, 322 
 Deuteronomy, discovery of, 89 ff.; 
 
 origin of, 9 iff.; aim of, 93 f.; 
 
 references to in Jeremiah, 97 ff., 
 
 115; affinities with Jeremiah, 107; 
 
 sacrificial element in, 183 f. 
 Divination, i, 2, 3 
 Double-mindedness of Popular Reli- 
 gion, 69 ff . 
 
 Drought, oracles on the, 128 ff. 
 Duhm, 29, 32rt., 51*1., 56n., 6zn., 
 
 70*1., 1395., 228, 247n., 326*1., 
 
 330, etc. 
 
 Ebed-melech, 257 
 
 Eichhorn, 39 
 
 Eleasa, 254 
 
 Elegy, prophetic, 46 f.; instance of, 
 
 124 
 
 Elijah, 29, 6o., 186, 219, 289 
 Elisha, 29, 149 
 Erbt, 44*t., 45*1., 48, 8 in., 86*., 
 
 100 ff., 126, 157, 243*:., 246, 342, 
 
 3480., etc. 
 
 Ewald, 15, 44n., 349 
 Ezekiel, 46 f., 62, 65, 82, 136, 159*1., 
 
 283!., 310, 313!., 341, 350 
 
 Fowler, Warde, 2 
 
 Gedaliah, 272 ff. 
 
 Gemariah, 254 
 
 Giesebrecht, io., 56 n., 78*1., 81, 
 
 227, etc. 
 Golden Calf, 65 
 Gray, 5*1., 179 
 Guthe, 321 
 
 Hanamel, 256, 299
 
 INDEX 
 
 359 
 
 Hananiah, 186, 189, 192, 254 
 
 Hebrews, Epistle to, 329 
 
 Hegel, 48 f. 
 
 Herodotus, 39!., 42 n. 
 
 itemed, 321 
 
 Hezekiah, 92, 248 n. 
 
 Hilkiah, 19 ff., 92, 95 
 
 Hinnom, valley of, 57n., 62 . 
 
 Hitzig, 305. 
 
 Holscher, 5 in. 
 
 Hosea, on Priesthood and cultus, 
 3, 179, 181 ; call of, 28; home life, 
 22; on Baal worship, 61 ; influence 
 on Jeremiah, 21 f., 33, 6on., 63, 
 64!., 73, 84, 86; contrasted with 
 Jeremiah, 48, 294; notion of 
 'Covenant* in, 322 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 9 
 
 Huldah, $5 
 
 Isaiah, i59-; vision of, 12, 26, 28, 
 46, 145, 161, 221; disciples of, 92, 
 95; doctrine of Inviolability of 
 Zion, 166, 268; denunciation of 
 Temple ritual, 179; national mis- 
 sion of, 216; doctrine of 'Rem- 
 nant,' compared with Jeremiah, 
 266 ff.; eschatology, 286 
 
 Isaiah, second, 350 
 
 Ishmael, 280 f. 
 
 Israel, use of term, 83. 
 
 James, William, 13, 26 
 
 Jehoahaz, 234!. 
 
 Jehoiachin, 249!. 
 
 Jehoiakim, 147, 169, 233, 245, 247 
 
 Jeremiah, family of, 198., n3 n -> 
 303; celibacy of, 22, 123; call of, 
 24, 255.; attack on his life at 
 Anathoth, no, 211; first impres- 
 sions of Jerusalem, 139 ff.; becomes 
 a public adviser, 231; prepares roll 
 of prophecies, 2375.; denuncia- 
 tion of Jehoiakim, 247 ff . ; and of 
 Jehoiachin, 249 f.; counsels sub- 
 mission, 252 ff., 257, 260 ff ., 287 ff . ; 
 denounces slave-owners' perfidy, 
 256; arrest and imprisonment, 
 2565.; advice to desert to the 
 enemy, 26 iff.; chooses to stay 
 with Gedaliah, 272, 2775.; taken 
 to Egypt, 282, 336 ff.; letter to 
 exiles, 192 f., 252!., 287 ff.; pur- 
 
 chase of family land, 298 f.; last 
 pubb'c utterance, 341 ff.; last 
 private message, 346!.; emotion- 
 alism, 15; his contribution to re- 
 ligious experience, 16 ; influence of 
 Hosea on, 2 if., 33; influence of 
 Nature on, 2 2f ., 1 2 1 , 1 3 3 ff. ; eschato- 
 logical conceptions, 23, 2850.; 
 sense of predestination, 27 f.; 
 world-wide mission, 28 ff.; visions, 
 30 ff., 49 ff., 123; internal tragedy 
 of his life, 34, 1358., 2098., 218 f.; 
 lyrical character of poetry, 45!.; 
 estimate of popular religion, 57 ff . ; 
 ijof., 135; attitude to Deutero- 
 nomic Reformation, 96 ff., n8f., 
 150!., 1831., 278, 291!.; concep- 
 tion of religion, 121 f., 223 ff., 325; 
 foreboding of doom, 123; concep- 
 tion of sin, 1449.; attitude to 
 temple worship, i68ff.; attitude 
 to sacrificial system, 1 82 f.; attitude 
 to degenerate prophets, i86ff.; 
 'Confessions of,' 201 ff.; impreca- 
 tions on enemies, 211, 224, 229^; 
 self-examination, 212!.; experi- 
 ence of prayer, 213!., 227!.; 
 difference from earlier prophets, 
 221 ff.; individualism, 223 ff.; pre- 
 paration for Christian Church, 
 224!., 229; limitations of his 
 religious experience, 228 f.; under- 
 lying hope for Israel, 244, 277, 
 296, 308; attitude to exiles in 
 Babylon, 2518.; doctrine of 
 Messiah, 3ioff.; predicts invasion 
 of Egypt by Babylon, 340 f. 
 Jesus Christ, 107, 117, 178, 229, 
 
 33* 334 
 
 Johanan, 280, 282, 284 
 Jonathan, 256 
 Josiah, 25, 63, 89, 108, 123, 147, 
 
 169, 233, 235; his character, 248 
 
 Kittel, 246 n. 
 Konig, toon., 104 
 Kraetschmar, 117 
 
 Lamentations, 279 
 Lessing, i 
 Luther, 140 
 
 Manasseh, 20, 24, 62, 172, 249, 344
 
 360 * INDEX 
 
 Marti, zojf. 
 Medes, 395. 
 Megiddo, battle of, 127, 168, 231, 
 
 233!. 
 
 Messiah, 3ioff. 
 Meyer, 34in. 
 
 Micah, 144, 177, 179, 216, 286 
 Micaiah, 187 f., 194, 220 
 Milton (quoted), 47 
 Mishpdt, 122, 13971. 
 Mizpah, 82, 272, 276, 303 
 Moses, as prophet, 196!. 
 Mowinckel, 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah's esti- 
 
 mate of, 260, 266, 275, 338 
 Nebuzaradan, 270 272!. 
 Necho, Pharaoh, 127, 233!. 
 North Israel, 81 ff., 303 ff. 
 
 Oehler, 227 
 Orelli, 30571. 
 
 Pashhur, 253 
 
 Paul, 1 06 
 
 Peake, son., 70 n., 263, etc. 
 
 Popular religion of Israel, 58 ff . 
 
 Potter, illustration of the, 162 ff. 
 
 Priestly code, 104, 119 
 
 Priests, 95, 114, 117, 185, 236 
 
 Prophecy, ecstatic element in, 40., 
 220 f.; predictive element in, 4ff., 
 9f.; national character of, 6ff., 
 72 f., 87 f., 215 ff.; mediatorial 
 function of, 8; subconscious ele- 
 ment in, 10 ff.; conditional or 
 absolute, 75 ff., 87, 155, 161, 177; 
 relation to cultus, 119, 181; false, 
 1 86 if.; criteria of true, 193 ff. 
 
 Psalmists, 222, 226 
 
 Psammetichus, 39 
 
 Puukko, 99 n. 
 
 Queen of Heaven, worship of, 342 ff . 
 
 Rarnah, 274, 304 
 Rechabites, 149, 327 
 Retribution, problem of, 1 1 1 f . 
 Riehm, 227 
 Rossetti, Christina, 226 
 
 Rothstein, 240 ., 24 in. 
 
 Sacrifice, i78ff. 
 
 Samuel, 187, 216 
 
 Schmidt, Hans, i8n., 20, 46, 49 f., 
 
 86., 234., 305., etc. 
 Scribes, 106, 119 
 
 Scythians, 39 ff., 42 ff., 89, 143, 232 
 Seer, 4 
 
 Sensuality of popular religion, 68 f. 
 Shaphan, 92, 107, 238 f. 
 Shemaiah, 253 
 Shiloh, priesthood of, 19; temple of, 
 
 171, 177 
 Slaves, 147, 256 
 
 Smend, 75, 76, 78 n., i8i., 224 
 Smith, George Adam, 18 
 Smith, Robertson, 8n., 60, 95 n., 
 
 266, 2690., 293 
 Steuernagel, 9 in., i28n., 259 n. 
 
 Tahpanhes, 340 
 Temple, i65ff. 
 Temple, second, 178 
 Tord, 3, 103 f., 116, 121 f., 324, 
 3 3 off. 
 
 Unreality of popular religion, 71!. 
 
 Vatke, 329 
 
 Visions, of Prophets, ioff., 26, 30 f., 
 194 
 
 Volz, on origin of Messianic doc- 
 trine, 3 1 3 ff . 
 
 Welch, 269n., 291 f. 
 
 Wellhausen, 15!., 62n., 201, 219, 
 
 228 
 
 Wilke, F., 4 2. 
 William the Silent, 248 
 Winckler, 4on., 43 n., 146!., 264, 
 
 34i. 
 Wordsworth (quoted), 23, 29, 33, 
 
 73> 299 
 
 Zadok, house of, 21 
 Zechariah, 3i2n. 
 Zedekiah, 252 ff., 269!. 
 Zephaniah, 24, 39, 253, 286 
 Zionism, 296 f. 
 
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