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?