Call with full voice,
And say, Sweep together and into
The fortified towns.
Hoist the signal towards Ṣion, 6
Pack off and stay not!
For evil I bring from the North
And ruin immense.
The Lion is up from his thicket, 7
Mauler of nations;
He is off and forth from his place,
Thy land(207) to lay waste;
That thy townships be burned
With none to inhabit!
Gird ye with sackcloth for this, 8
Howl and lament,
For the glow of the wrath of the Lord
Turns not from us.
These lines are followed by a verse with an introduction to itself, and
therefore too separate from the context, and indeed too general to have
belonged to so vivid a song:—
9. And it shall be in that day—Rede of the Lord—
The heart of the king shall perish,
And the heart of the princes,
And the priests shall be aghast
And the prophets dismayed!
And this is followed by one of the sudden protests to God, which are
characteristic of Jeremiah:—
10. And I said, Ah Lord God, surely Thou hast wholly deceived this
people and Jerusalem saying, “Peace shall be yours,” while the
sword strikes through to the life!
2. The Second Scythian Song is like the first, prefaced by a double
address, which there is no reason to deny to Jeremiah. Jerusalem is named
twice in the song, and naturally, since the whole land is threatened with
waste and the raiders come up to the suburbs of the capital. The Prophet
speaks, but as so often the Voice of the Lord breaks through his own and
calls directly to the city and people (though the last line of verse 12
may be a later addition). On the other hand, the Prophet melts into his
people; their panic and pangs become his. This is one of the earliest
instances of Jeremiah’s bearing of the sins of his people and of their
punishment.
IV. 11. At that time it was said to this people and to Jerusalem,
A wind off the blaze of the bare desert heights,
Straight on the Daughter of my people,
Neither to winnow nor to sift,
In full blast it meets me. 12
[Now will I speak My judgments upon them]
Lo, like the clouds he is mounting, 13
Like the whirlwind his cars!
Swifter than vultures his horses,
Woe, we are undone!
Jerusalem, cleanse thou thy heart,(208) 14
That thou be saved!
How long shalt thou harbour within thee
Thy guilty devices.
For hark! They signal from Dan, 15
Mount Ephraim echoes disaster.
Warn the folk, “They are come!”(209) 16
Make heard o’er Jerusalem.
Behold,(210) beleaguerers (?) coming
From a land far away;
They give out their voice on the townships of Judah;
Like the guards on her fields 17
They are round and upon her,
For Me she defied!(211)
Thy ways and thy deeds have done 18
These things to thee.
This evil of thine how bitter!
It strikes to the heart.
O my bowels! My bowels, I writhe! 19
O walls of my heart!
My heart is in storm upon me,
I cannot keep silence.(212)
For the sound of the trump thou hast heard,
O my soul,
The uproar of battle.
Ruin upon ruin is summoned, 20
The land is undone!
Suddenly undone my tents,
In a moment my curtains!
How long must I look for the signal 21
And hark for the sound of the trump!
[Yea, fools are My people 22
Nor Me do they fear.(213)
Children besotted are they,
Void of discretion.
Clever they are to do evil,
To do good they know not.
3. The Third of the Scythian Songs is without introduction. Whether the
waste, darkness, earthquake and emptiness described are imminent or have
happened is still left uncertain, as in the previous songs. The Prophet
speaks, but as before the Voice of God peals out at the end.
I looked to the earth, and lo chaos, 23
To the heavens, their light was gone.
I looked to the hills and(214) they quivered, 24
All the heights were a-shuddering.
I looked—and behold not a man! 25
All the birds of heaven were fled.
I looked to the gardens, lo desert, 26
All the townships destroyed,
Before the face of the Lord,
The glow of His wrath.
[For thus hath the Lord said, 27
All the land shall be waste
Yet full end I make not](215)
For this let the Earth lament, 28
And black be Heaven above!
I have spoken and will not relent,
Purposed and turn not from it.(216)
4. The Fourth Scythian Song follows immediately, also without
introduction. The first four couplets vividly describe the flight of the
peasantry, actual or imagined, before the invaders. The rest seems
addressed to the City as though being threatened she sought to reduce her
foes with a woman’s wiles, only to find that it was not her love but her
life they were after, and so expired at their hands in despair. All this
is more suitable to the Chaldean than to the Scythian invasion, and may be
one of the Prophet’s additions in 604 to his earlier Oracles. However we
take it, the figure is of Jeremiah’s boldest and most vivid. The irony is
keen.
From the noise of the horse and the bowmen, IV. 29
All the land(217) is in flight,
They are into the caves, huddle in thickets,(218)
Are up on the crags.
Every town of its folk is forsaken
No habitant in it.
All is up! Thou destined to ruin(?)(219) 30
What doest thou now?
That thou dressest in scarlet,
And deck’st thee in deckings of gold,
With stibium widenest thine eyes.
In vain dost thou prink!
Though satyrs they utterly loathe thee,
Thy life are they after!
For voice as of travail I hear, 31
Anguish as hers that beareth,
The voice of the daughter of Ṣion agasp,
he spreadeth her hands:
“Woe unto me, but it faints,
My life to the butchers!”
The next poem, Ch. V. 1-13, says little of the Scythians, possibly only in
verse 6, but details the moral reasons for the doom with which they
threatened the people. It describes the Prophet’s search through Jerusalem
for an honest, God-fearing man and his failure to find one. Hence the
fresh utterance of judgment. Perjury and whoredom are rife, with a
callousness to chastisement already inflicted. Some have relegated
Jeremiah’s visit to the capital to a year after 621-20 when the
deuteronomic reforms had begun and Josiah had removed the rural priests to
the Temple.(220) But, as we have seen, Anathoth lay so near to Jerusalem,
and intercourse between them was naturally so constant, that Jeremiah may
well have gained the following experience before he left his village for
residence in the city. The position of the poem among the Scythian Songs,
along with the possible allusion to the Scythians in verse 6, suggests a
date before 620. There is no introduction.
Range ye the streets of Jerusalem, V. 1
Look now and know,
And search her broad places,
If a man ye can find—
If there be that does justice,
Aiming at honesty.
[That I may forgive them(221)]
Though they say, “As God liveth,” 2
Falsely(222) they swear
LORD, are Thine eyes upon lies(?) 3
And not on the truth(223)?
Thou hast smitten, they ail not,
Consumed them, they take not correction.
Their faces set harder than rock,
They refuse to return.
But I said, “Ah, they are the poor, 4
And therefore(224) the foolish!
“They know not the Way of the Lord,
The Rule of their God.
“To the great I will get me, 5
With them let me speak.
“For they know the Way of the Lord,
And the Rule of their God.”
Ah, together they have broken the yoke,
They have burst the bonds!
So a lion from the jungle shall smite them, 6
A wolf of the waste destroy,
The leopard shall prowl round their towns,
All faring forth shall be torn.
For many have been their rebellions,
Profuse their backslidings.
How shall I pardon thee this— 7
Thy children have left Me,
And swear by no-gods.
I gave them their fill and they whored,
And trooped to the house of the harlot.
Rampant(225) stallions they be, 8
Neighing each for the wife of his friend.
Shall I not visit on such, 9
Rede of the Lord,
Nor on a people like this
Myself take vengeance?
Up to her vine-rows, destroy, 10
And make(226) a full end,
Away with her branches,
They are not the Lord’s.
For betraying they have betrayed Me 11
Judah and Israel both [Rede of the Lord]
The Lord they have belied, 12
Saying “Not He!
Evil shall never come on us,
Nor famine nor sword shall we see.
“The prophets! they are nothing but wind 13
The Word is not with them!”(227)
14. Therefore thus hath the Lord of Hosts said, because of their
speaking this word—(228)
Behold I am setting My Word
In thy mouth for fire,
And this people for wood,
And it shall devour them.
5. The Fifth Song upon the Scythians, Ch. V. 15-17, besides still leaving
them nameless, emphasises their strangeness to Israel’s world. There was a
common language in Western Asia, Aramean, the _lingua franca_ of traders
from Nineveh to Memphis; and Jew, Assyrian and Egyptian conversed in it.
But the tongue of these raiders from over the Caucasus was unintelligible.
Yet how they would set their teeth into the land! Mixed with the verses
which thus describe them are others which suit not them but the Chaldeans
and must have been added by the Prophet in 604. A people so new to the
Jews might hardly have been called by Jeremiah _an ancient nation, from of
old a nation_, and in fact these phrases are wanting in the Greek version.
Behold, I am bringing upon you V. 15
A nation from far,
[O house of Israel, Rede of the Lord
An ancient nation it is,
From of old a nation.](229)
A nation thou knowest not its tongue, 16
Nor canst hear what it says,
Its quiver an open grave,(230)
All of it stalwarts.(231)
It shall eat up thy harvest and bread, 17
Eat thy sons and thy daughters,
It shall eat up thy flocks and thy cattle,
Eat thy vines and thy figs.
It shall beat down thy fortified towns,
Wherein thou dost trust, with the sword.
The last couplet is unsuitable to the Scythians, incapable as they were of
sieges and avoiding fortified towns—though once they rushed Askalon. It is
probably, therefore, another of the additions of 604 referring to the
Chaldeans. The prose which follows is certainly from the Chaldean period,
for it was not Scythians but Chaldeans who threatened with exile the
peoples whom they overran.
V. 18. Yet even in those days—Rede of the Lord—I will not make a
full end of you. 19. And it shall be when they say, For what hath
the Lord our God done to us all these things?—that thou shalt say
to them, Just as ye have left Me and have served foreign gods in
your own land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land not yours.
There follows a poem, verses 20-31, that has nothing to do with the
Scythian series; and that with the preceding prose, with which also it has
no connection, shows us what a conglomeration of Oracles the Book of
Jeremiah is. It seems as though the compiler, searching for a place for
it, had seen the catch-word _harvest_ in the previous Scythian song and,
this one having the same word, he had copied it in here. The Book shows
signs elsewhere of the same mechanical method. But like all the Oracles
this has for its theme the foolish dulness of Israel to their God and His
Word, and the truth that it is their crimes which are the cause of all
their afflictions yet now not in history but in Nature. There is no reason
to doubt that the verses are Jeremiah’s, and nothing against our dating
them in the early years of his ministry.
Declare ye this in the House of Jacob, V. 20
Through Judah let it be heard:(232)
Hear ye now this, people most foolish, 21
And void of sense.(233)
[They have eyes but they do not see,
Ears but they hear not.]
Fear ye not Me, Rede of the Lord, 22
Nor tremble before Me?—
Who have set the sand a bound for the sea,
An eternal decree it cannot transgress;
Though (its waters)(234) toss, they shall not prevail,
And its rollers boom, they cannot break over.
Yet this people heart-hard and rebellious, 23
Have swerved and gone off;
For not with their hearts do they say, 24
“Now fear we the Lord our God,
“Who giveth the rain in its season,
The early and latter;
“And the weeks appointed for harvest
Secureth for us.”
These have your crimes deranged, 25
Your sins withholden your luck.
For scoundrels are found in My folk, 26
Who prowl with the crouch of a fowler(?)(235)
And set their traps to destroy,
’Tis men they would catch!
Like a cage that is full of birds, 27
Their houses are filled with deceit,(236)
And so they wax wealthy and great— 28
They are fat, they are sleek!—
Overflowing with things of evil(?),
They defend not the right,
The right of the orphan to prosper,
Nor justice judge for the needy.(237)
Shall I not visit on these, 29
Rede of the Lord,
Nor on a people like this
Myself be avenged?(238)
Appalling and ghastly it is 30
That has come to pass in the land:
The prophets prophesy lies, 31
The priests bear rule at their hand,
And My people—they love so to have it;
But what will ye do in the end?
6. In the Sixth Song on the Scythians, VI. 1-5, which also is given
without introduction, Jerusalem is threatened—even Jerusalem to which in
the previous songs the country-folk had been bidden to fly for shelter—and
the foes are described in the attempt to rush her, as they rushed Askalon
according to Herodotus. That they are represented as faltering and no
success is predicted for them, and also that they are called _shepherds_,
are signs that it is the Scythians, though still nameless, who are meant
in verses 3-5. The next three verses, separately introduced, point rather
to a Chaldean invasion by their picture of besiegers throwing up a mound
against the walls, and may therefore be one of the additions to his
earlier Oracles made by the Prophet, when in 604 the enemy from the North
was clearly seen to be Nebuchadrezzar, with the siege-trains familiar to
us from the Assyrian and Babylonian monuments; upon which are represented
just such a hewing of timber and heaping of mounds against a city’s walls.
Pack off, O Benjamin’s sons, VI. 1
Out of Jerusalem!
Strike up the trump in Tekoa,(239)
O’er Beth-hakkérem lift up the signal!
For evil glowers out of the North,
And ruin immense.
O the charming (?) the pampered height(240) 2
Of the daughter of Ṣion!
Unto her shepherds are coming, 3
With their flocks around,(241)
They pitch against her their tents,
Each crops at his hand.
“Hallow(242) the battle against her,
Up, let us on by noon.”
“Woe unto us! The day is turning, 4
The shadows of evening stretch.”
“Up then and on by night, 5
That we ruin her palaces!”
For thus said the Lord of Hosts: 6
Hew down her(243) trees and heap
Against Jerusalem a mound;
Woe to the City of Falsehood,(244)
Nought but oppression within her!
As a well keeps its waters fresh 7
She keeps fresh her evil;
Violence and spoil are heard throughout her,
Ever before Me sickness and wounds.
Jerusalem, be thou corrected, 8
Lest from thee My soul doth break,
Lest I lay thee a desolate waste,
Uninhabited land.
Here follows another and separately introduced Oracle:—
Thus hath the Lord(245) said: 9
Glean, let them glean as a vine
Israel’s remnant;
Like the grape-gleaner turn thy hand
Again to its(246) tendrils.
“To whom shall I utter myself, 10
And witness that they may hear?
“Lo, uncircumcised is their ear,
They cannot give heed.
“The Word of the Lord is their scorn,
No pleasure have they therein.
“I am full of the rage of the Lord, 11
“Weary with holding it back!
Pour(247) it out on the child in the street,
On the youths where they gather;
Both husband and wife shall be taken,
The old with the full of days.
Their homes shall be turned to others, 12
Their fields and wives together,
When I stretch forth My Hand
On those that dwell in this(248) land.
[Rede of the Lord.]
Because from the least to the greatest 13
All are greedy of gain,
Right on from prophet to priest
Every one worketh lies.
They would heal the breach of My people, 14
As though it were trifling,
Saying, “It is well, it is well”—
When—where(249) is it well?
Were they shamed of their loathsome deeds? 15
Nay, not at all ashamed!
They know not even to blush!
So they with the fallen shall fall,
And shall reel in the time that I visit,
Rede of the Lord.
Still another Oracle which gives no glimpse of the Scythians, but
threatens a vague disaster and once more states the moral reasons for
Judah’s doom. Its allusion to incense and sacrifices is no reason for
dating it after the discovery of Deuteronomy.(250)
Thus hath the Lord said— 16
Halt on the ways and look,
And ask for the ancient paths:
Where is(251) the way that is good?
Go ye in that,
And rest shall ye find to your soul,
But they—“We go not!”
I raised up sentinels for you— 17
Heed the sound of the trump!(252)
But they—“We heed not!”
Therefore, O nations, hearken, 18
And own My record against them (?)(253)
Hear thou, O Earth, 19
Lo, evil I bring to this people,
The fruit of their own devices,(254)
Since they have not heeded My Word,
And My Law have despised.
To Me what is incense that cometh from Sheba, 20
Sweet-cane from a far-off land?
Your holocausts are not acceptable,
Nor your sacrifice pleasing.
Therefore thus hath the Lord said: 21
Behold I set for this people
Blocks upon which to stumble;
Fathers and children together,
Neighbour and friend shall perish.
None of the foregoing brief and separate Oracles diverts from the moral
theme of all these earlier utterances of the Prophet, that Judah’s
afflictions, whether from Nature or from invaders, are due to her own
wickedness. And this record even the foreign peoples are called to
witness—another proof that from the first Jeremiah had a sense of a
mission to _the nations_ as well as to his own countrymen.
7. There follows the Seventh, the last of the Songs which may be referred
to the Scythian invasion, Ch. VI. 22-26. It repeats the distance from
which, in the fateful North, those hordes have been _stirred_ to their
work of judgment, their ruthlessness and terrific tumult, the panic they
produce, and bitter mourning. The usual formula introduces the verses.
22. Thus hath the Lord said:
Lo, a people comes out of the North,
A nation(255) astir from the ends of the earth,
The bow and the javelin they grasp, 23
Cruel and ruthless,
The noise of them booms like the sea,
On horses they ride—
Arrayed as one man for the battle
On thee, O Daughter of Ṣion!
We have heard their fame, 24
Limp are our hands;
Anguish hath gripped us,
Pangs as of travail.
Fare not forth to the field, 25
Nor walk on the way,
For the sword of a foe,
Terror all round!
Daughter of My people, gird on thee sackcloth 26
And wallow in ashes!
Mourn as for an only-begotten,
Wail of the bitterest!
For of a sudden there cometh
The spoiler upon us.(256)
This is the last of Jeremiah’s Oracles on the Scythians. There is little
or no doubt of their date—before 621-20. What knowledge of this new people
and their warfare the Prophet displays! What conscience of the ethical
purpose of the Lord of Hosts in threatening Judah with them! Yet some
still refuse to credit the story of his Call, that from the first he heard
himself appointed as a prophet _to the nations_.(257)
This section of Jeremiah’s earlier Oracles concludes with one addressed to
himself, Ch. VI. 27-30. It describes the task assigned him during the most
of his time under Josiah, whether before the discovery and promulgation of
the Book of the Law in 621-20, or subsequently to this while he watched
the nation’s new endeavour to repent and reform. During the years from
621-20 till 608 when Josiah was defeated and slain at Megiddo, there can
have been but little for him to do except to follow, as his searching eyes
and detached mind alone in Israel could follow, the great venture of Judah
in obedience to the Book of the Law. For this interval the outside world
had ceased to threaten Israel. The Assyrian control of her was relaxed:
the people of God were free, and had their first opportunity for over a
century to work out their own salvation.
Assayer among My people I set thee,(258) 27
To know and assay their ways,
All of them utterly recreant, 28
Gadding about to slander.
Brass and iron are all of them(?),
Wasters they be!
Fiercely blow the bellows, 29
The lead is consumed of the fire(?)
In vain does the smelter smelt,
Their dross(259) is not drawn.
“Refuse silver” men call them,
For the Lord hath refused them.(260)
To take these lines as subsequent to the institution of Deuteronomy and
expressive of the judgment of the Prophet upon the failure of the
reformation under Josiah to reach the depth of a real repentance,(261) is
unnecessary. The young Jeremiah had already tested his people and in his
earliest Oracles reached conclusions as hopeless as that here. At least he
had already been called to test the people; and in next section we shall
see how he continued to fulfil his duty after the discovery of
Deuteronomy, and onwards through the attempts at reformation which it
inspired.
3. Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. (Chs. VII, VIII. 8, XI.)
We are not told when or why Jeremiah left Anathoth for Jerusalem. His
early poem denouncing the citizens(262) reveals a close observation of
their morals but no trace of the reforms begun by Josiah soon after 621
B.C. Some therefore hold that he had settled in the City before that
year.(263) Anathoth, however, lay so near Jerusalem that even from his
boyhood Jeremiah must have been familiar with the life and trade of the
capital; and as his name is not mentioned in connection with the discovery
of the Law-Book on which the reforms were based, and neither he nor his
biographer speaks of that discovery, it is probable that as yet he had not
entered upon residence in the Temple-precincts. A natural occasion for the
migration of his family and himself would be upon Josiah’s
disestablishment of the rural sanctuaries and provision for their priests
beside the priests of the Temple.(264) In any case we find Jeremiah
henceforth in Jerusalem, delivering his Words in the gateways or courts of
the Temple to all classes of the citizens as well as to the country-folk,
who under the new laws of worship thronged more than ever the City and her
great Shrine.
There is general agreement that _the Book of the Law_ discovered by the
Temple-priests in 621-20 was our Book of Deuteronomy in whole or in
part—more probably in part, for Deuteronomy has been compiled from at
least two editions of the same original, and the compilation may not have
been made till some time later. Many of its laws, including some peculiar
to itself, have been woven out of more than one form, and there are two
Introductions to the Book, each hortatory and historical and each covering
to some extent the same ground as the other. We cannot tell how much of
this compilation was contained in the discovered Book of the Law. But this
Book included certainly _first_ the laws of worship peculiar to
Deuteronomy, because the reforms which it inspired carried out these laws,
and probably _second_ some of the denunciations which precede or follow
the laws, for such would explain the consternation of the King when the
Book was read to him.(265)
Deuteronomy is fairly described as a fresh codification of the ancient
laws of Israel in the spirit of the Prophets of the Eighth Century. The
Book is not only Law but Prophecy, in the proper sense of this word, and a
prophetic interpretation of Israel’s history. It not only restates old and
adds new laws but enforces the basal truths of the prophets, and in this
enforcement breathes the ethical fervour of Amos and Isaiah as well as
Hosea’s tenderness and his zeal for education.
Deuteronomy has three cardinal doctrines: The One God, The One Altar, and
The One People.
_First_, The One God. Though slightly tinged with popular conceptions of
the existence of other gods,(266) the monotheism of the Book is
strenuously moral and warmly spiritual. The God of Israel is to be served
and loved because He is Love—the One and Only God not more by His
Righteousness and His Power than by His Grace, manifest as all three have
been throughout His dealings with Israel. The worship of other gods is
forbidden and so is every attempt to represent Himself in a material form.
His ritual is purged of foolish, unclean and cruel elements. Witchcraft
and necromancy are utterly condemned.
_Second_—and this is original to Deuteronomy—The One Altar, at that time
an inevitable corollary both to the need for purity in the worship of God
and to the truth of His Unity. The long license of sacrifices at a
multitude of shrines had resulted not only in the debasement of His
worship, but in the popular confusion of Himself with a number of local
deities.(267) The removal of the high-places, the concentration of
sacrifice upon One Altar had, by the bitter experience of centuries,
become a religious and an ethical necessity.