an address by Jeremiah reported in XXV. 1-11 (with perhaps 13_a_). This
repeats the Prophet’s charge that his people have refused—now for
three-and-twenty years—to listen to his call for repentance and reaffirms
the certainty, at last made clear by the Battle of Carchemish, that their
deserved doom lies in the hands of a Northern Power, which shall waste
their land and carry them into foreign servitude for seventy years. The
suggestion that this address formed the conclusion of the Second Roll
dictated by Jeremiah to Baruch is suitable to the contents of the address
and becomes more probable if we take as genuine the words in 13_a_, _Thus
will I bring upon that land all My words which I have spoken against her,
all that is written in this Book_. But a curious question rises from the
fact that we have two differing reports of the address.(333) Very
significantly the shorter Greek Version contains neither the addition to
the date, _that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon_,
nor the two statements that his was the Northern Power which would waste
Judah and which she should serve for seventy years (verses 1, 9, 11, as
also the similar reference in verse 12), all of which are inserted in the
Hebrew text but not without a sign of their being later intrusions upon
it.(334) And indeed it is inconceivable that the Greek translator could
have omitted the four references to Nebuchadrezzar (including that in
verse 12) had he found them in the Hebrew text from which he worked.
Probably, therefore, Jeremiah did not include them in the first version of
his address; and for this he had reason. His purpose in the address was to
declare the fulfilment of the substance of all his previous prophesying,
and this had been not that the Chaldeans, but that _a northern power_,
would prove to be the executioner of God’s judgment upon Judah. The
references to Nebuchadrezzar were added, possibly by Jeremiah himself or
by Baruch, as the Chaldean doom steadily drew nearer. The interesting
thing is that the earlier version of the address survived and was used by
the Greek translator.(335)
Verses 12-14, indicating the destruction of Babylon in her turn after
seventy years, are, in whole or in part, generally taken as a post-exilic
addition.(336) Omitting verse 14, the Greek inserts between 13 and 15 the
Oracles on Foreign Nations, which the Hebrew postpones to Chs. XLVI.
ff.(337) In the uncertain state of the text of 12-14 it is impossible to
decide whether this was or was not the original position of those Oracles.
The rest of the chapter, verses 15-38, is so full of expansions and
repetitions, which we may partly see from a comparison of it with the
Greek, as well as of inconsistencies with some earlier Oracles by
Jeremiah,(338) of traces of the later prophetic style and of echoes of
other prophets, that many deny any part of the miscellany to be Jeremiah’s
own. Yet we must remember that his commission was not to Judah alone(339)
but to _the nations_ as well, against many of which XXV. 15-38 is
directed; and the figure of the Lord handing to the Prophet the cup of the
wine of His wrath is not one which we have any reason to doubt to be
Jeremiah’s. Sifting, by help of the Greek, the Hebrew list of nations who
are to drink of the cup, we get Judah and Egypt; Askalon, Gaza, Ekron, and
the remnant of Ashdod; Dedan, Tema, Buz, and their _clipt_ neighbours in
Arabia; all of whom were shaken in Jeremiah’s day by the Chaldean terror.
Indeed the reference to Ashdod suits the condition of that Philistine city
in the Prophet’s time better than its restored prosperity in the
post-exilic age. The substance of verses 15-23 may therefore be reasonably
left to Jeremiah. Verses 24-38 are more doubtful.(340)
2. Parables. (XIII, XVIII-XX, XXXV.)
To the reign of Jehoiakim are usually referred a number of symbolic
actions by Jeremiah, the narratives of which carry no dates. So far as
they imply that the Prophet was still able to move openly about Jerusalem
and the country they might be regarded as earlier than 604, when he was
under restraint and had to hide himself.(341) But this is not certain. We
are left to take them in the order in which they occur in the Book.
The first is that of the waist-cloth, XIII. 1-11. Jeremiah was charged to
buy a linen waist-cloth(342) and after wearing it, but keeping it from
damp, to bury it in the cleft of a rock, and after many days to dig it up,
when he found it rotting. So had the Lord taken Israel to cleave to Him as
such a cloth _cleaves to the loins of a man_; but separated from Him they
had likewise rotted and were good for nothing. Separated by what—God’s
action or their own? As it stands the interpretation is complicated. God
spoils Israel because of their pride (verse 9) and Israel spoil themselves
by disobedience and idolatry (verse 10). The complication may be due to a
later addition to the text. But this question is not serious. Neither is
that of the place where Jeremiah is said to have buried the cloth.
_Pĕrath_, the spelling in the text, is the Hebrew name for the Euphrates
and so the Greek and our own versions render it. But the name has not its
usual addition of The River. If the Euphrates be intended the story is
hardly one of fact, but rather a vivid parable of the saturation of the
national life by heathen, corruptive influences from Mesopotamia.(343) Yet
within an hour from Anathoth lies the Wady Farah, a name which corresponds
to the Hebrew _Pĕrath_ or (by a slight change) _Parah_; and the Wady,
familiar as it must have been to Jeremiah, suits the picture, having a
lavish fountain, a broad pool and a stream, all of which soak into the
sand and fissured rock of the surrounding desert.(344) That the Wady Farah
was the scene of the parable is therefore possible, though not
certain.(345) But the ambiguity of these details does not interfere with
the moral of the whole.
This parable is immediately followed by the ironic metaphor of the Jars
Full of Wine, XIII. 12-14, which I have already quoted.(346)
Next comes the Parable of the Potter, Ch. XVIII, that might be from any
part of the Prophet’s ministry, during which he was free to move in
public. This parable is instructive first by disclosing one of the ways
along which Revelation reached, and spelt itself out in, the mind of the
Prophet. He felt a Divine impulse to go down to the house of the
Potter,(347) _and there I will cause thee to hear My Words_, obviously not
words spoken to the outward ear. For, as Jeremiah watched the potter at
work on _his two stones_,(348) and saw that when the vessel he first
attempted was marred he would remould the clay into another vessel as
seemed good to him, a fresh conception of the Divine Method with men broke
upon Jeremiah and became articulate. A word from the Lord flashed through
his eyes upon his mind, just as in his first visions of the almond-blossom
and the caldron.(349)
XVIII. 5. Then the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, [6] O
House of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter?(350) Behold,
as the clay in the hand of the potter, so are ye in My hand.(351)
Thus by figure and by word the Divine Sovereignty was proclaimed as
absolutely as possible. But the Sovereignty is a real Sovereignty and
therefore includes Freedom. It is not fettered by its own previous
decrees, as some rigorous doctrines of predestination insist, but is free
to recall and alter these, should the human characters and wills with
which it works in history themselves change. There is a Divine as well as
a human Free-will. “God’s dealing with men is moral; He treats them as
their moral conduct permits Him to do.”(352)
The Predestination of men or nations, which the Prophet sees figured in
the work of the potter, is to Service. This is clear from the comparison
between Israel and a vessel designed for a definite use. It recalls
Jeremiah’s similar conception of his own predestination, which was not to
a certain state, of life or death, but to the office of speaker for God to
the nations. Yet because the acceptance or rejection by a nation or an
individual of the particular service, for which God has destined them,
naturally determines their ultimate fate, therefore this wider sense,
which predestination came to have in Christian doctrine, is so far also
involved in the parable.(353)
To the truths of the Divine Sovereignty and the Divine Freedom the parable
adds that of the Divine Patience. The potter of Hinnom does not
impatiently cast upon the rubbish which abounds there the lump of clay
that has proved refractory to his design for it. He gives the lump another
trial upon another design. If, as many think, the verses which follow the
parable, 7-10, are not by Jeremiah himself (though this is far from
proved, as we shall see) then he does not explicitly draw from the
potter’s patience with the clay the inference of the Divine patience with
men. But the inference is implicit in the parable. Did Jeremiah intend it?
If he did, this is proof that in spite of his people’s obstinacy under the
hand of God, he cherished, though he dared not yet utter, the hope that
God would have some fresh purpose for their service beyond the wreck they
were making of His former designs for them and the ruin they were thereby
bringing on themselves—that He would grant them still another chance of
rising to His will. But if Jeremiah did not intend this inference from his
parable then we may claim the parable as one more example of that of which
we have already had several, the power of this wonderful man’s experience
and doctrine to start in other minds ideas and beliefs of which he himself
was not conscious, or which at least he did not articulate—that power
which after all is his highest distinction as a prophet. I do not think,
however, that we can deny to Jeremiah all consciousness of what his
parable implies in regard to the Patience of the Divine Potter with the
perverse human clay in His hands. For we have already seen from another of
the Prophet’s metaphors that under the abused and rank surface of a
nation’s or an individual’s life he was sure of soil which by deeper
ploughing would yet yield fruits meet for repentance.(354)
In either case the parable is rich in Gospel for ourselves. If we have
failed our God upon His first designs for us and for our service do not
let us despair. He is patient and ready to give us another trial under His
hand. And this not only is the lesson of more than one of our Lord’s
parables, for instance that of the fig-tree found fruitless, but
nevertheless given the chance of another year,(355) and the motive of His
hopes for the publicans and harlots, but is implied by all the Gospel of
His life and death for sinners. In these He saw still possibilities worth
His dying for.
But as Christ Himself taught, there are, and ethically must be, limits to
the Divine Patience with men. Of these the men of Judah and Jerusalem are
warned in the verses which follow the parable. While it is true (verse 7
ff.) that if a nation, which God has said He will destroy, turn from its
evil, He will relent, the converse is equally true of a nation which He
has promised to plant and build, that if it do wrong and obey not He will
surely repent of the good He had planned for it. For this refractory
people of Judah He is already _framing_ or _moulding evil_—the verb used
is that of which the Hebrew name for _potter_ is the participle. Though
chosen of God and shaped by His hands for high service Israel’s destiny is
not irrevocable; nay, their doom is already being shaped. Yet He makes
still another appeal to them to repent and amend their ways. To this they
answer: _No use! we will walk after our own devices and carry out every
one the stubbornness __ of his evil heart._ At least that is how Jeremiah
interprets their temper; his people had hardened since Megiddo and the
accession of Jehoiakim.
Some moderns have denied these verses to Jeremiah and taken them as the
addition of a later hand and without relevance to the parable. With all
respect to the authority of those critics,(356) I find myself unable to
agree with them. They differ as to where the authentic words of the
Prophet cease, some concluding these with verse 4 others with verse 6. In
either case the parable is left in the air, without such practical
application of his truths as Jeremiah usually makes to Judah or other
nations. Nor can the relevance of the verses be denied, as Cornill, one of
their rejectors, admits. Nor does the language bear traces of a later
date. They seem to me to stand as Jeremiah’s own.
The Prophet’s threat of evil is still so vague, that, with due
acknowledgment of the uncertainty of such points, we may suppose it, along
with the Parable of the Potter, to have been uttered before the Battle of
Carchemish, when the Babylonian sovereignty over Western Asia became
assured.(357)
The next in order of Jeremiah’s symbols, Ch. XIX, the breaking of a
potter’s jar past restoration, with his repetition of doom upon Judah, led
to his arrest, Ch. XX, and this at last to his definite statement that the
doom would be captivity to the King of Babylon. Some therefore date the
episode after Carchemish, but this is uncertain; Jeremiah is still not
under restraint nor in hiding.
He is charged to buy an earthen jar and take with him some of the elders
of the people and of the priests to the Potsherd Gate in the Valley of
Hinnom.(358) There, after predicting the evils which the Lord shall bring
on the city because of her idolatry and her sacrifice of children in that
Valley down which they were looking from this gate, he broke the jar and
flung it upon the heaps of shattered earthenware from which the gate
derived its name;(359) and returning to the Temple repeated the Lord’s
doom upon Judah and Jerusalem. He was heard by Pashḥur of the priestly
guild of Immer, who appears to have been chief of the Temple police, and
after being _smitten_ was put in the stocks, but the next day released,
probably rather because his friends among the princes had prevailed in his
favour than because the mind of Pashḥur had meantime changed. For Jeremiah
on his release immediately faced his captor with these words:—
XX. 3. The Lord hath called thy name not Pashḥur but
Magor-Missabib, Terror-all-round. 4. For thus saith the Lord, Lo,
I will make thee a terror to thyself and all thy friends, and they
shall fall by the sword of their foes, and thine own eyes shall be
seeing it; and all Judah shall I give into the hand of the king of
Babylon, and he shall carry them to exile and smite them with the
sword ... 6. And thou Pashḥur and all that dwell in thy house
shall go into captivity and in Babylon thou shalt die.(360)
At last Jeremiah definitely states what Judah’s doom from the North is to
be. We wish that we knew the date of this utterance.
Assigned by its title to _the days of Jehoiakim_ is another action of the
Prophet, which is the exhibition rather of an example than of a symbol,
Ch. XXXV. The story was probably dictated by Jeremiah to Baruch, for while
the Hebrew text opens it in the first person (2-5), the Greek version
carries the first person throughout and the later change by the Hebrew to
the third person (12 and 18) may easily have been due to a copyist
mistaking the first personal suffix for the initial letter of the name
Jeremiah.(361)
The Rechabites, a tent-dwelling tribe sojourning within the borders, and
worshipping the God, of Israel, had taken refuge from the Chaldean
invasion within the walls of Jerusalem. Knowing their fidelity to their
ancestral habits Jeremiah invited some of them to one of the Temple
chambers and offered them wine. They refused, for they said that their
ancestor Jehonadab ben-Rechab(362) had charged them to drink no wine,
neither to build houses, nor sow seed nor plant vineyards. Whereupon
Jeremiah went forth and held them up as an example to the men of Judah,
not because of any of the particular forms of their abstinence, but
because of their constancy. Here were people who remembered, and through
centuries had remained loyal to, the precepts of an ancestor; while Israel
had fallen from their ancient faithfulness to their God and ignored His
commandments. The steadfast loyalty of these simple nomads to the
institutions of a far-away human father, how it put to shame Judah’s
delinquency from the commands of her Divine Father! This contrast is in
line with the others, which we have seen Jeremiah emphasising, between his
people’s fickleness towards God and the obdurate adherence of the Gentiles
to their national gods, or the constancy of the processes of nature: the
birds that know the seasons of their coming, the unfailing snows of
Lebanon and the streams of the hills. The whole story is characteristic of
Jeremiah’s teaching.(363)
3. Oracles on the Edge of Doom. (VII. 16-XVIII _passim_, XXII, XLV.)
From the seventh to the tenth chapters of the Book of Jeremiah there are a
number of undated passages in prose and in verse, which are generally held
to have been included in the collection of the Prophet’s Oracles written
out by Baruch in 604-3, and of which some may have been delivered during
the reign of Josiah, but the most of them more probably either upon its
tragic close at Megiddo in 608, or under Jehoiakim. We have already
considered the addresses reported in VII. 1-15, 21-27,(364) as well as the
metrical fragments VII. 28, 29, and VIII. 8, 9.(365) There are other prose
passages describing (1) VII. 16-20, the worship of the Queen, or the Host,
of Heaven, which had been imposed upon Jerusalem by the Assyrians, and
either survived the decay of their power from 625 onwards, or if
suppressed by Josiah in obedience to Deuteronomy,(366) had been revived
under Jehoiakim; (2) VII. 30-34, the high-places in Topheth, upon which
children were sacrificed, also condemned by Deuteronomy and recorded as
destroyed by Josiah;(367) (3) VIII. 1-3, the desecration of the graves of
Jerusalem. It is not necessary to reproduce these prose passages, whether
they be Jeremiah’s or not; our versions of them, Authorised and Revised,
are sufficiently clear.
But there follow, from VIII. 4 onwards, after the usual introduction, a
series of metrical Oracles of which the following translation is offered
in observance of the irregularity of the measures of the original. Note
how throughout the Prophet is, as before, testing his false
people—_heeding_ and _listening_ are his words—finding no proof of a
genuine repentance and bewailing the doom that therefore must fall upon
them. Some of his earlier verses are repeated, and there is the reference
to the Law, VIII. 8 f., which we have discussed.(368) There is also a hint
of exile—which, however, is still future.
In Ch. VIII, verses 4-12 (including the repetitions they contain) seem a
unity; verse 13 stands by itself (unless it goes with the preceding); 14,
15 echo one of the Scythian songs, but the fear they reflect may be that
either of an Egyptian invasion after Megiddo or of a Chaldean; 16 and 17
are certainly of a northern invasion, but whether the same as the
preceding is doubtful; and doubtful too is the connection of both with the
incomparable elegy which follows—VIII. 18-IX. 1. For IX. 1 undoubtedly
belongs to this, as the different division of the chapters in the Hebrew
text properly shows. In Ch. IX. 2-9 the Prophet is in another mood than
that of the preceding songs. There the miseries of his people had
oppressed him; here it is their sins. There his heart had been with them
and he had made their sufferings his own; here he would flee from them to
a lodge in the desert.(369) IX. 10-12, is another separate dirge on the
land, burned up but whether by invaders or by drought is not clear. Then
13-16 is a passage of prose. In 17-22 we have still another elegy with
some of the most haunting lines Jeremiah has given us, on war or
pestilence, or both. And there follow eight lines, verses 23-24, on a very
different, a spiritual, theme, and then 25-26 another prose passage, on
the futility of physical circumcision if the heart be not circumcised. If
these be Jeremiah’s, and there is no sign in them to the contrary, they
form further evidence of his originality as a prophet.
The two Chs. VIII and IX are thus a collection both of prose passages and
poems out of different circumstances and different moods, with little
order or visible connection. Are we to see in them a number of those _many
like words_ which Jeremiah, when he dictated his Second Roll to Baruch,
added to his Oracles on the First Roll?(370)
* * * * *
The first verses are in curious parallel to Tchekov’s remarkable plaint
about his own people and “the Russian disease” as he calls their failing:
“Why do we tire so soon? And when we fall how is it that we never try to
rise again?”
And thou shalt say to them,(371) Thus saith the Lord: VIII. 4
“Does any one fall and not get up,
Or turn and not return?”(372)
Why then are this people turning 5
Persistently turning(373)?
They take fast hold of deceit,
Refuse to return.
I have been heeding, been listening— 6
They speak but untruth!
Not a man repents of his evil,
Saying, “What have I done?”
All of them swerve in their courses
Like a plunging horse in the battle.
Even the stork in the heavens 7
Knoweth her seasons,
And dove and swift and swallow
Keep time of their coming—
Only my people, they know not
The Rule(374) of the Lord.
How say ye, “We are the wise, 8
With us is the Law(375) of the Lord.”
But, lo, into falsehood hath wrought it(376)
False pen of the scribes.
Put to shame are the wise, 9
Dismayed and taken,
The Word of the Lord have they spurned—
What wisdom is theirs?
So to others I give their wives, 10
Their fields to who may take them,
For all from the least to the greatest
On plunder are bent;
From the prophet on to the priest
Everyone worketh lies.
They would heal the breach of my people 11
As though it were trifling,
Saying “It is well, it is well!”—
And well it is not!
Were they shamed of the foulness they wrought? 12
Nay, shamed not at all,
Nor knew their dishonour!
So shall they fall with the falling,
Reel in the time of their reckoning,
Sayeth the Lord.(377)
Would I harvest them?—Rede of the Lord— 13
No grapes on the vine,
And never a fig on the fig-tree,
Withered the leaves.(378)
For what sit we still? 14
Sweep together
And into the fortified cities,
To perish.
For the Lord our own God
Hath doomed us to perish,
Hath drugged us with waters of bale—
To Him(379) have we sinned.
Hoping for peace? 15
’Twas no good,
For a season of healing?
Lo, panic.(380)
From Dan the bruit(381) has been heard, 16
Hinnying of his horses,
With the noise of the neighing of his steeds
The land is aquake.
He(382) comes,(383) he devours the land and her fulness
The city and her dwellers.
For behold, I am sending upon you 17
Basilisk-serpents,
Against whom availeth no charm,
But they shall bite you.(384)
Ah! That my grief is past comfort(385) 18
Faints on me my heart,
Lo, hark to the cry of my people
Wide o’er the land.(386)
“Is the Lord not in Ṣion, 19
Is there no king?(387)
[Why have they vexed Me with idols,
Foreigners’ fancies?](388)
“Harvest is past, summer is ended, 20
And we are not saved!”
For the breaking of the daughter of my people 21
I break, I blacken!
Horror hath fastened upon me
Pangs as of her that beareth.(389)
Is there no balm in Gilead, 22
Is there no healer?
Why do the wounds never close(390)
Of the daughter of my people?
Oh that my head were waters, IX. 1
Mine eyes a fountain of tears,
That day and night I might weep
For the slain of my people!
There follows an Oracle in a very different mood. In the previous one the
Prophet has taken his people to his heart, in spite of their sin and its
havoc; in this he repels and would be quit of them.