Jeremiah : Being The Baird Lecture for 1922 Part 9

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 towns.h.i.+ps 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 G.o.d 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 towns.h.i.+ps 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 ?ion 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, G.o.d-fearing man and his failure to find one. Hence the fresh utterance of judgment. Perjury and wh.o.r.edom are rife, with a callousness to chastis.e.m.e.nt 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 G.o.d 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 foolis.h.!.+

"They know not the Way of the Lord, The Rule of their G.o.d.

"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 G.o.d."

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-G.o.ds.

I gave them their fill and they wh.o.r.ed, 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, a.s.syrian 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 G.o.d done to us all these things?-that thou shalt say to them, Just as ye have left Me and have served foreign G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, "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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.syrian and Babylonian monuments; upon which are represented just such a hewing of timber and heaping of mounds against a city's walls.