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.