1. His Earliest Oracles. (II. 2-IV. 4.)

These bear few marks of the later date at which they were dictated by Jeremiah—in fact only a probable reference to Egypt's invasion of Palestine in 608, Ch. II. 16, and part, if not all, of Ch. III. 6-18. The general theme is a historical retrospect—Israel's early loyalty to her God, and her subsequent declension to the worship of other gods, figured as adultery; along with a profession of penitence by the people, to which God responds by a stern call to a deeper repentance and thorough reform; failing this, her doom, though vaguely described as yet, is inevitable. The nation is addressed as a whole at first in the second person singular feminine, but soon also in the plural, and the plural prevails towards the end. The nation answers as a whole, sometimes as I but sometimes also as We.

Before expounding the truths conveyed by these early Oracles it is well to translate them in full, for though not originally uttered at the same time, they run now in a continuous stream of 091 verse—save for one of those portages of prose which I have described.¹³⁷¹³⁷P. 37. There is no reason for denying the whole of this passage to Jeremiah, whether because it is in prose or because it treats of Northern Israel as well as Judah.¹³⁸¹³⁸See pp. 40 f., 72. But on parts of it the colours are distinctly of a period later than that of the Prophet. All the rest of the Oracles may be taken to be from himself. Duhm after much hesitation has come to doubt the genuineness of Ch. II. 5-13, but his suspicions of deuteronomic influence seem groundless, and even if they were sound they would be insufficient for denying the verses to Jeremiah.¹³⁹¹³⁹See p. 41.

II. 1, 2, And he said, Thus sayeth the Lord:¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰So simply the Greek; the Hebrew, And the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem saying, not only betrays an editorial redundancy, but what follows is addressed not to Jerusalem but to all Israel. Here if anywhere the Greek has the original. Jeremiah begins thus to dictate to Baruch.

I remember the troth of thy youth, Thy love as a bride, Thy following Me through the desert, The land unsown. Holy to the Lord was Israel,  3 First-fruit of His income; All that would eat it stood guilty, Evil came on them. Rede of the Lord— 092 Hear the Lord's Word, House of Jacob,  4 All clans of Israel's race! [Thus sayeth the Lord]  5 What wrong found your fathers in Me, That so far they broke from Me, And following after the Bubble141141Hebrew kebel = breath. Bubbles became. Nor said they:  6 Where is the Lord who carried us up From the land of Miṣraim?142142Egypt. Who led us through the desert, Land of waste and chasms, Land of drought and barren,143143So Greek. A land which nobody crosses, Nor mankind settles upon it. And I brought you into a garden,  7 To feed on its fruit and its wealth. But coming ye fouled My land, My heritage turned to loathing. The priests never said,  8 Where is the Lord? They who handle the Law knew Me not, The rulers144144Lit. shepherds. rebelled against Me; By Baal the prophets did prophesy, And followed the worthless. So still with you must I strive,145145Hebrew adds Rede of the Lord.  9 And strive with your sons.146146Some Hebrew MSS. and Vulgate. 093 For cross to the isles of Kittîm and look  10 Send to Kedár, and think for yourselves,147147Cyprus = Kittim and Kedár, an Arab tribe, are the extremes of the world then known to the Jews. And see, was ever like this? Have any nations148148So Greek. changed their gods,  11 And these no gods at all? Yet My people exchanged their149149Hebrew marg. my. Glory For that which is worthless. Be heavy,150150Or heave (Ball), lit. be aghast but the Hebrew is alliterative, shommû shamaîm. O heavens, for this,  12 Shudder and shudder again! Twain the wrongs My people have wrought—  13 Me have they left, The Fount of live water, To hew themselves cisterns, Cisterns broken, That cannot hold water!

Israel a slave!  14 Or house-born serf! Why he for a prey? Against him the young lions roar,  15 Give forth their voice, And his land they lay waste, Burned are his towns and tenantless. 094 The sons, too, of Noph and Taḥpanḥes have forced,  16 Have abused thee.151151This couplet is after the Greek, Hebrew has browsed on thy skull for forced. Noph = Memphis, Egypt's capital; Taḥpanḥes = Daphne on the Egyptian road to Palestine. Either 14-19 or more probably 16 alone is one of Jeremiah's additions to his earlier Oracles after Egypt's invasion of Palestine in 608. Is not all this being done thee  17 For thy leaving of Me?152152So Greek; Hebrew adds, when he led thee by the way. And now what to thee is the road to Miṣraim,153153Miṣraim = Egypt. Nile's waters to drink? Or what is to thee the road to Asshúr,  18 To drink of the River? Be thy scourge thine own sin,  19 Thy doublings convict thee! Know and see how sore for thyself, How bitter to leave Me! But never was awe of Me thine— Rede of the Lord thy God.154154These last four lines follow the Greek.

From of old thou hast broken thy yoke,  20 Hast burst thy bonds, Saying, I will not serve! While upon every high hill, And under each rustling tree, Harlot thou sprawlest! 095 Yet a noble vine did I plant thee,  21 Wholly true seed; How could'st thou change to a corrupt,155155So Duhm by a better division of words. A wildling grape? Yea, though thou scour thee with nitre,  22 And heap to thee lye, Ingrained is thy guilt before Me, Rede of the Lord, thy God.156156So the Greek. How sayest thou, I'm not defiled,  23 Nor gone after the Baals. Look at thy ways in the Valley, And own thy deeds! A young camel, light o' heel,157157The Hebrew ḳal seems to combine here its two meanings of swift and trifling. Zig-zagging her tracks, A heifer, schooled to the desert—  24 In the heat of her lust, Snapping the wind in her passion, Who is to turn her? None that would seek her need strain them, In her month they shall find her. Save thou thy feet from the peeling,  25 Thy throat from thirst! But thou sayest, No use!158158Hebrew no' ash; with Greek delete the second no. For with strangers I'm fallen in love, Them must I after! 096 Like the shame of the thief when he's caught,  26 Shall Israel's sons159159So Greek. be shamed. [They and their kings and their princes, Their priests and their prophets]160160The insertion (by a copyist?) of this formula rather weakens the connection. Who say to a stock Thou my Father!  27 To a stone Thou hast borne me! Their161161So some Versions. backs they have turned to Me Never their162162Greek adds and as the number of streets in Jerusalem they burn to Baal; cp. xi. 13. faces. Yet in time of their trouble they say Rise up and save us! Where be thy gods thou hast made thee?  28 Let them rise, if so they may save thee In time of thy trouble; For as thy townships in number,163163So Greek. So be, O Judah, thy gods! What quarrel have you against Me?  29 All you are the sinners;164164Greek. Against Me you all have rebelled— Rede of the Lord. In vain have I smitten your sons  30 Ye165165Greek. took not correction Your166166Greek the. sword has devoured your prophets, Like a ravaging lion. 097 O generation—you!—look at the Word of the Lord!167167Prose, probably a later insertion when the prophet dictated his Oracles. See pp. 47 f.  31 Have I been a desert to Israel, Or land of thick darkness? Why say My folk We are off, No more to meet Thee! Can a maiden forget her adorning,  32 Or her girdle a bride? Yet Me have My people forgotten, Days without number! Why trimmest thou still thy ways  33 To seek after love? Therefore thou also to evil Thy ways hast trained:168168The text of this quatrain is corrupt, the rendering above makes use of the versions. Yea, on thy skirts is found blood  34 Of innocent souls, Not only on felons(?) I find it But over all these.169169The text of this verse too is uncertain. For skirts Greek has hands; to innocent Hebrew adds needy. Some read the second couplet [though] thou did'st not catch them breaking in, but because of all these, i.e. thy sins against Me, thou did'st murder them. Yet thou said'st, I am assoiled,  35 Sure His wrath turns from me! Behold I am going to judge thee For saying, I'm sinless! 098 How very light dost thou take it,  36 To change thy ways! E'en of Miṣraim shalt thou be ashamed170170Or balked. As ashamed of Ashshúr. Out of this too shalt thou come  37 With thy hands on thy head, For spurned hath the Lord the things of thy trust, Not by them shalt thou prosper!

III. 1. [Saying]:—If a man dismiss his wife and she go from him and become another man's, shall she return to him?¹⁷¹¹⁷¹Greek. Is that woman¹⁷²¹⁷²Greek; Hebrew land. not too polluted? But thou hast played the harlot with many lovers and—wouldest return unto Me? Rede of the Lord.

Lift to the clearings thine eyes,  2 Where not wast thou tumbled? For them by the roads thou hast sate, Like an Arab in desert, Thou hast fouled the land with thy whoredoms And with thy vices; With thy lovers so many  3 It has meant but thy snare.173173So Duhm after the Greek. Hebrew is impossible. The brow of a harlot was thine, Shame thou hadst done with. 099 But now—thou callest me Father,  4 Friend of my youth! Bears He a grudge for ever,  5 Stands on His guard for aye?174174The two Hebrew verbs in this couplet, naṭar and shamar mean to keep (or maintain) and to watch; they are usually transitive and (in the sense here intended) are followed by a noun, anger or wrath, which English versions supply here. But its absence from both the Hebrew and Greek texts leads us to take the verbs as intransitive, as is the case with naṭar in New-Hebrew. Lo, so thou hast spoken, yet done Ills to thine utmost.

6. And the Lord said unto me in the days of Josiah, the king,¹⁷⁵¹⁷⁵Verses 6-18, in prose break the connection both of style and meaning between 5 and 19 and cannot in whole be Jeremiah's or from his period. This is especially true of 16-18 which assume the destruction of the Ark and the Exile of Judah as well as of Israel as already actual. But the passage probably contains genuine fragments from Jeremiah. Hast thou seen what recreant Israel did to Me¹⁷⁶¹⁷⁶So Greek. going up every high hill and under each rustling tree, and there playing the harlot. 7. And I said, After she has done all these things can she return to Me?—and she did not return. 8. And her treacherous sister Judah saw, yes she saw,¹⁷⁷¹⁷⁷So one Hebrew MS. and Syriac. that, all because recreant Israel committed adultery, I had dismissed her and given her the bill of her divorce; yet her sister treacherous Judah 100 was not afraid, but also went and played the harlot. 9. And it came to pass that, through the wantonness of her harlotry, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stones and with stocks. 10. And yet, for all this, treacherous Judah¹⁷⁸¹⁷⁸Hebrew adds her sister. has not returned to Me with all her heart, but only in feigning.¹⁷⁹¹⁷⁹Hebrew adds Rede of the Lord. 11. And the Lord said to me, Recreant Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah. 12. Go and call out these words toward the North and say,

Turn thee to Me,180180So Greek. recreant Israel, I frown181181Lit. make not My face to fall. not upon thee; For gracious am I (Rede of the Lord), Nor for ever bear grudge. Only acknowledge thy guilt,  13 That defying the Lord thy God, Thou hast scattered to strangers thy ways Under each rustling tree, And hast182182Greek; Hebrew ye have. not obeyed My voice— Rede of the Lord.

14. [Return ye backsliding children, Rede of the Lord, for I am your Baal,¹⁸³¹⁸³That is Lord and Husband. and I will take you, one from a city and two from a clan, and 101 will bring you to Ṣion. 15. And I will give you Shepherds after My heart, and they shall shepherd you with knowledge and with skill. 16. And it shall be, when ye multiply and increase in the land in those days (Rede of the Lord), they shall not again say, The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord! It shall not come to mind, it shall be neither remembered nor missed,¹⁸⁴¹⁸⁴So Greek. nor shall it be made again. 17. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the Throne of the Lord and all nations shall gather to her,¹⁸⁵¹⁸⁵Hebrew adds to the Name of the Lord to Jerusalem. nor walk any more after the stubbornness of their evil hearts. 18. In those days the House of Judah shall walk with the House of Israel, that together they may come from the land of the North to the land which I gave their¹⁸⁶¹⁸⁶So Greek; Hebrew your; after North Greek has and from all lands. fathers for a heritage.]

But I187187In antithesis to verse 5 of which it is the immediate sequel both in sense and metre. had declared the How(?)  19 I should set thee188188Feminine, i.e. Judah was a daughter, and a son's portion was designed for her. among the sons, And should give thee a land of delight, Fairest domain of the nations. 102 And said, Thou would'st call Me Father, Nor from after Me turn. As a woman plays false to her fere,189189So finely Ball.  20 So to Me ye played false! [O House of Israel, Rede of the Lord.]

Hark!  21 From the clearings weeping is heard, Wailing of Israel's sons, That they have perverted their way, Forgotten the Lord their God. Return ye oft-turning children,  22 Let me heal your back-turnings! Here are we! to Thee we are come, Thou Lord art our God. Surely the heights are a fraud  23 The hills and their hubbub!190190The riotous festivals on the high-places. Alone in the Lord our God Is Israel's safety. The Baal hath devoured our toil  24 And our sires' from their youth, Their flocks and their herds, Their sons and daughters— Lie we low in our shame,  25 Our dishonour enshroud us! For to our God191191Hebrew adds the Lord. have we sinned, [We and our sires from our youth] 103 Up to this day! Nor have heeded the voice Of the Lord our God.

[Israel, if thou wilt return,  IV. 1 Return to Me, And thy loathly things put from thy mouth Nor stray from My face.192192This couplet after the Greek. If in truth thou swear by the life of the Lord,  2 Honest and straight, Then the nations shall bless them by Him And in Him shall they glory.]193193I agree with Cornill and Skinner that these two verses are a later addition. The answer to the people's confession comes in verses 3 and 4.

3. Thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of¹⁹⁴¹⁹⁴So some Hebrew MSS. and versions. Jerusalem:

Fallow up your fallow-ground,195195Hebrew nirû lakeḿ nîr; also in English the noun and verb are the same—to fallow or fallow up = to break or plough up. And sow not on thorns! To your God196196So Greek and other versions. circumcise ye,  4 Off from your heart with the foreskin! [O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem] Lest My fury break out like fire, And burn with none to quench! [Because of the ill of your doings.]

From his call the Prophet went forth, as we saw, with a heavy sense of the responsibility and the power of the single soul, so far as he himself was concerned; and while we study his ministry we shall find him coming to feel the same for each of his fellow-men. But in these his earliest utterances he follows his predecessors, and especially Hosea, in addressing his people as a whole, and treating Israel as a moral unit from the beginning of her history to the moment of his charge to her. He continues the figures which Hosea had used. Long ago in Egypt God chose Israel for His child, for His bride, and led her through the desert to a fair and fruitful land of her own. Then her love was true. The term used for it, ḥeṣedh, is more than an affection; it is loyalty to a relation. To translate it but kindness or mercy, as is usually done, is wrong—troth is our nearest word.

I remember the troth of thy youth, Thy love as a bride, Thy following Me through the desert, The land unsown.

Upon the unsown land there were no rival gods. But in fertile Canaan the nation encountered innumerable local deities, the Baalîm, husbands of the land, begetters of its fruits and lords of its waters. We conceive how tempting these Baalîm were both to the superstitious 105 prudence of tribes strange to agriculture and anxious to conciliate the traditional powers thereof; and to the people's passions through the sensuous rites and feasts of the rural shrines. Among such distractions Israel lost her innocence, forgot what her own God was or had done for her, and ceased to enquire of Him. Hence her present vices and misery in contrast with her early troth and safety. Hence the twin evils of the time—on the one hand the nation's trust in heathen powers and silly oscillation between Egypt and Assyria; on the other the gross immoralities to which the Baals had seduced its sons. There was a double prostitution, to gods and to men, so foul that the young prophet uses the rankest facts in the rural life which he is addressing in order to describe it.

The cardinal sin of the people, the source of all their woes is religious,

Is not this being done thee For thy leaving of Me?

This was so, not only because He was their ancestral God—though such an apostasy was unheard of among the nations—but because He was such a God and had done so much for them; because from the first He had wrought both with grace and with might, while the gods they went after had neither character nor efficiency—mere breaths, mere bubbles!

The nerve of the faith of the prophets was this memory—that their God was love and in love had wrought for His people. The frequent expression of this by the prophets and by Deuteronomy, the prophetic edition of the Law, is the answer to those abstractions to which some academic moderns have sought to reduce the Object of Israel's religion—such as, a tendency not ourselves that makes for righteousness. The God of Israel was Righteous and demanded righteousness from men; but to begin with He was Love which sought their love in return. First the Exodus then Sinai; first Redemption then Law; first Love then Discipline. Through His Deeds and His Word by the prophets He had made all this clear and very plain.

What wrong found your fathers in Me, That so far they broke from Me? Have I been a desert to Israel, Or land of thick darkness? Why say My folk, We are off, To meet Thee no more.

Jeremiah has prefaced this Divine challenge with a passionate exclamation in prose—O Generation—you!—look at the Word of the Lord!—which (as I have said) I like to think was added to his earlier verses when he dictated these to Baruch. Cannot you see, cannot you see? He is amazed by the stupidity, the callousness, the abandonment with 107 which his people from their leaders down have treated a guidance so clear, a love so constant and yearning. And again his soul sways upon the contrast between the early innocence and the present corruption of Israel.

A noble vine did I plant thee, Wholly true seed, How could'st thou change to a corrupt, A wildling grape?

The sense of their terrible guilt governs him, and of their indifference to it, saying we are clean, to which he answers:—

Yea though thou scour thee with nitre And heap to thee lye, Ingrained is thy guilt before Me— Rede of the Lord.

Yet the fervency with which he pleads the Divine Love reveals a heart of hunger, if hardly of hope, for his nation's repentance. Indeed apart from his own love for them he could not have followed Hosea so closely as he does at this stage of his career, without feeling some possibility of their recovery from even this, their awful worst; and his ear strains for a sign of it. Like Hosea he hears what sounds like the surge of a national repentance¹⁹⁷¹⁹⁷iii. 22b, 25; Hos. v. 15-vi. 3.—was it when Judah listened to the 108 pleadings and warnings of the discovered Book of the Law and all the people stood to the Covenant? But he does not say whether he found this sincere or whether it was merely a shallow stir of the feelings. Probably he suspected the latter, for in answer to it he gives not God's gracious acceptance, but a stern call to a deeper repentance and to a thorough trenching of their hearts.

Fallow up the fallow-ground, Sow not on thorns! To your God198198So Greek. circumcise ye, Off from your heart with the foreskin! Lest My wrath break out like the fire, And burn with none to quench.199199iv. 3, 4.

Jeremiah has been called the blackest of pessimists, and among his best-known sayings some seem to justify the charge:—

Can the Ethiop change his skin, Or the leopard his spots? Then also may ye do good, Who are wont to do evil.200200xiii. 23.

And again,

False above all is the heart, And sick to despair, Who is to know it?

But to his question came the answer:—

I, the Lord, searching the heart, And trying the reins, To give to each man as his ways, As the fruit of his doings.201201xvii. 9, 10.

In this answer there is awfulness but not final doom. The affirmation of a man's dread responsibility for his fate implies, too, the liberty to change his ways. In the dim mystery of the heart freedom is clear. Similarly, and even more plainly, is this expressed in the earlier call to break up the fallow-ground. This implies that beneath those surfaces of the national life, whether of callous indifference on the one hand or of shallow feeling on the other, there is soil which, if thoroughly ploughed, will be hospitable to the good seed and fit to bring forth fruits meet for repentance. Human nature even at its worst has tracts other than those on which there has been careless sowing among thorns, moral possibilities below those of its abused or neglected surfaces. Let us mark this depth, which the Prophet's insight has already reached. Much will come out of it; this is the matrix of all developments by himself and others of the doctrine of man and his possibilities under God. And for all time the truth is valid that many spoiled or wasted lives are spoiled or wasted 110 only on the surface; and that it is worth while ploughing deeper for their possibilities.²⁰²²⁰²See further, Lecture viii.

In what form the deep ploughing required was at first imagined by the Prophet we see from the immediately following Oracles.