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)