Part 15

In the Court of the Guard Jeremiah remained till the city was taken.(603) He regained communication with his friends; and it is not surprising to have as from this time several sayings by him, or to discover from them that his heart, no longer confined to reiterating the certain doom of the city, was once more released to the hope of a future for his people, hope across which the shadow of doubt appears to have fallen but once. His guard-court prophecies form part of that separate collection, Chs. XXX-XXXIII, to which the name The Book of Hope has been fitly given. Of these chapters XXX and XXXI, without date, imply that the city has already fallen and the exile of her people is complete. But XXXII and XXXIII are assigned to the last year of the siege and to the Prophet’s confinement to the guard-court. There is now general agreement that XXXII. 1-5 (or at least 3-5) are from a later hand, which correctly dates the story it introduces but attributes Jeremiah’s imprisonment to Ṣedekiah instead of to the princes, and even seems to confound Ṣedekiah with Jehoiachin; and _second_ that the story itself, of a transaction between Jeremiah and his cousin regarding some family property, is genuine, dictated by the Prophet to Baruch before or after the end of the siege. Some reject as later all the rest of the chapter: a long prayer by Jeremiah and the Lord’s answer to it, both of which are full of deuteronomic phrases. Yet that an editor should have made so large an addition to the book without genuine material to work from is hardly credible; while it is characteristic of Jeremiah to have fallen into the doubt his prayer reveals, and this doubt would naturally be followed by a Divine answer. But such original elements it is not possible to discriminate exactly from the expansions by which they have been overlaid.(604)

XXXII. 6. And Jeremiah said, The Word of the Lord came to me saying, [7] Behold, Hanamel son of Shallum thine uncle is coming to thee to say, Buy thee my field in Anathoth, for thine is the right of redemption to buy it. 8. And Hanamel son of my uncle came to me in the guard-court and said, Buy my field that is Anathoth, for the right of inheritance is thine and thine the redemption; buy it for thyself. Then I knew that it was the Lord’s Word. 9. So I bought the field from Hanamel mine uncle’s son and weighed to him seventeen silver shekels. 10. And I subscribed the deed and sealed it and took witnesses, weighing the money in the balances. 11. And I took the deed of sale, both that which was sealed and that which was open,(605) [12] and I gave it to Baruch son of Neriah, son of Maḥseiah, in the sight of Hanamel mine uncle’s son, and in sight of the Jews sitting in the guard-court. 13. And in their sight I charged Baruch, saying, [14] Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: Take this deed of sale which is sealed, and this deed which is open, and put them in an earthen vessel that they may last many days. 15. For thus saith the Lord, Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land. 16. Now after I had given the deed of sale to Baruch, Neriah’s son, I prayed to the Lord saying, Ah Lord ... (?) [24] behold the mounts; they are come to the city to take it, and the city shall be given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting against it, because of the sword and the famine and the pestilence; and what Thou hast spoken is come to pass, and, lo, Thou art seeing it. 25. Yet Thou saidst to me, Buy thee the field for money, so I wrote the deed and sealed it and took witnesses—whereas the city is to be given into the hands of the Chaldeans!

The tone of the expostulating Jeremiah is here unmistakable; and (as I have said) a Divine answer to his expostulations must have been given him, though now perhaps irrecoverable from among the expansions which it has undergone, verses 26-44. Two things are of interest: the practical carefulness of this great idealist, and the fact that the material basis of his hope for his country’s freedom and prosperity was his own right to a bit of property in land. Let those observe, who deny to such individual rights any communal interest or advantage. Jeremiah at least proves how a small property of his own may help a prophet in his hope for his country and people.

All this is followed in Ch. XXXIII by a series of oracles under the heading _The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time while he was still shut up in the guard-court_. Because verses 14-26 are lacking in the Greek and could not have been omitted by the translator had they been in the original text, and because they are composed partly of mere echoes of Jeremiah and partly of promises for the Monarchy and Priesthood not consonant with his views of the institutions of Israel, they are very generally rejected. So are 2 and 3 because of their doubtful relevance and their style, that of the great prophet of the end of the Exile. The originality of 1 and 4-13 has also been denied. The question is difficult. But there is no reason to doubt that the editor had good material for the data in 1, or that under the Hebrew text, which as it stands in 4, 5 is impossible(606) and throughout 6-13 has been much expanded, there is something of Jeremiah’s own. Verses 4 and 5 reflect the siege in progress, though if the date in verse 1 be correct we must take _torn down_ as future. In 6-13 are promises of the restoration of the ruined city, of peace and stability, of the return of the exiles both of Judah and Israel and of their forgiveness; Jerusalem shall again be a joy, and the voices of joy, of the bridegroom and bride, and of worship in the Temple, shall again be heard; shepherds and their flocks shall be restored throughout Judah and the Negeb. It would be daring to deny to the Prophet the whole of this prospect. The city was about to be ruined, its houses filled with dead; the land had already been ravaged. His office of doom was discharged; it is not unnatural to believe that his great soul broke out with a vision of the hope beyond for which he had taken so practical a pledge. That is all we can say; some of the details of the prospect can hardly be his.(607)

Jerusalem fell at last in 586 and Jeremiah’s imprisonment in the guard-court was over.(608)

4. And After. (XXX, XXXI, XXXIX-XLIV.)

There are two separated accounts of what befel Jeremiah when the city was taken. Ch. XXXIX. 3, 14 tells us that he was fetched from the guard-court by Babylonian officers,(609) and given to Gedaliah, the son of his old befriender Ahikam, _to be taken home_.(610) At last!—but for only a brief interval in the life of this homeless and harried man. When a few months later Nebuṣaradan arrived on his mission to burn the city and deport the inhabitants Jeremiah is said by Ch. XL to have been carried off in chains with the rest of the captivity as far as Ramah, where, probably on Gedaliah’s motion, Nebuṣaradan released him and he joined Gedaliah at Miṣpah.(611)

It is unfortunate that we take our impressions of Nebuchadrezzar from the late Book of Daniel instead of from the contemporary accounts of his policy by Jeremiah, Baruch and Ezekiel. A proof of his wisdom and clemency is here. While deporting a second multitude to Babylonia in the interests of peace and order, he placed Judah under a native governor and chose for the post a Jew of high family traditions and personal character. All honour to Gedaliah for accepting so difficult and dangerous a task! He attracted those Jewish captains and their bands who during the siege had maintained themselves in the country,(612) and advised them to acknowledge the Chaldean power and to cultivate their lands, which that year fortunately produced excellent crops. At last there was peace, and the like-minded Governor and Prophet must together have looked forward to organising in Judah the nucleus at least of a restored Israel.

To this quiet interval, brief as it tragically proved, we may reasonably assign those Oracles of Hope which it is possible to recognise as Jeremiah’s among the series attributed to him in Chs. XXX, XXXI. No chapters of the book have been more keenly discussed or variously estimated.(613) Yet at least there is agreement that their compilation is due to a late editor who has arranged his materials progressively so that the whole is a unity;(614) that many of these materials are obviously from the end of the exile in the style then prevailing; but that among them are genuine Oracles of Jeremiah recognisable by their style. These are admitted as his by the most drastic of critics. It is indeed incredible that after such a crisis as the destruction of the Holy City and the exile of her people, and with the new situation and prospect of Israel before him, the Prophet should have had nothing to say. And the most probable date for such utterances of hope as we have now to consider is not that of his imprisonment but the breathing-space given him after 586, when the Jewish community left in Judah made such a promising start.(615)

From its measure and vivid vision the first piece might well be Jeremiah’s; but it uses Jacob, the later literature’s favourite name for Israel, which Jeremiah does not use, and (in the last two verses) some phrases with an outlook reminiscent of the Second Isaiah. The verses describe a day when the world shall again be shaken, but out of the shaking Israel’s deliverance shall come.

[The sound of trembling we hear, XXX. 5 Dread without peace. Enquire now and look ye, 6 If men be bearing? Why then do I see every man(616) With his hands on his loins? All faces are changed, and Livid become.(617) For great is that day, 7 None is there like it, With a time of trouble for Jacob. Yet out of it saved shall he be. It shall come to pass on that day— 8 Rede of the Lord— I will break their(618) yoke from their(619) neck, Their(620) thongs I will burst; And strangers no more shall they serve,(621) But serve the Lord their God, 9 And David their king, Whom I will raise up for them.]

The next piece is more probably Jeremiah’s, as even Duhm admits; verses 10 and 11 which precede it are not given in the Greek.

Healless to me is thy ruin, 12 Sick is thy wound, Not for thy sore is remede, 13 No closing (of wounds) for thee! Forgot thee have all thy lovers, 14 Thee they seek not. With the stroke of a foe I have struck thee, A cruel correction. Why criest thou over thy ruin, 15 Thy healless pain? For the mass of thy guilt, thy sins profuse Have I done to thee these.

If these Qînah quatrains are not Jeremiah’s, some one else could match him to the letter and the very breath. They would fall fitly from his lips immediately upon the fulfilment of his people’s doom. Less probably his are the verses which follow and abruptly add to his stern rehearsal of judgment on Judah the promise of her deliverance, even introducing this with a _therefore_ as if deliverance were the certain corollary of judgment—a conclusion not to be grudged by us to the faith of a later believer; for it is not untrue that the sinner’s extremest need is the occasion for God’s salvation.(622) Yet the sudden transition feels artificial, and lacks, be it observed, what we should expect from Jeremiah himself, a call to the doomed people to repent. Note, too, the breakdown of the metre under a certain redundancy, which is not characteristic of Jeremiah.

[Therefore thy devourers shall all be devoured, 16 And all thine oppressors. All shall go off to captivity; Thy spoilers for spoil shall be And all that upon thee do prey, I give for prey. For new flesh I shall bring up upon thee, 17 From thy wounds I shall heal thee;(623) Outcast they called thee, O Ṣion, Whom none seeketh after.]

The rest of the chapter is even less capable of being assigned to Jeremiah.

More of Jeremiah’s own Oracles are readily recognised in Ch. XXXI. I leave to a later lecture the question of the authenticity of that on The New Covenant and of the immediately preceding verses;(624) while the verses which close the chapter are certainly not the Prophet’s. But I take now the rest of the chapter, verses 1-28. The first of these may be editorial, the link by which the compiler has connected Chs. XXX and XXXI; yet there is nothing to prevent us from hearing in it Jeremiah himself.

XXXI. 1. At that time—Rede of the Lord—I shall be God to all the families(625) of Israel, and they shall be a people to Me.

A poem follows which metrically and in substance bears every mark of being Jeremiah’s. The measure is his favourite Qînah, and the memory of the Lord’s ancient love for Israel, which had stirred the youth of the Prophet,(626) revives in his old age and is the motive of his assurance that Israel will be restored. It is of Ephraim as well as of Judah that he thinks, indeed of Ephraim especially. We have seen how the heart of this son of Anathoth-in-Benjamin was early drawn to the exiles from that province on which the northward windows of his village looked out.(627) Now once more he was in Benjamin’s territory, at Ramah and at Miṣpah, with the same northward prospect. Naturally his heart went out again to Ephraim and its banished folk. Of the priestly tribe as Jeremiah’s family were, their long residence in the land of Benjamin must have infected them with Benjamin’s sense of a closer kinship to Ephraim, the son of Joseph, the son of Rachel, than to Judah, the son of Leah. And there was, in addition, the influence of neighbourhood. If blood be thicker than water it is equally true that watered blood is warmed to affection by nearness of locality and closeness of association.(628)

It is questionable whether the opening couplet quotes the deliverance of Israel from Egypt as a precedent for the future return of the northern tribes from captivity, described in the lines that follow; or whether this return is at once predicted by the couplet, with the usual prophetic assurance as though it had already happened. If we take _the desert_ as this is taken in Hosea II. 14, we may decide for the latter alternative.

Grace have they found in the desert, XXXI. 2 The people escaped from the sword; While Israel makes for his rest from afar The Lord appears to him(629): 3 “With a love from of old I have loved thee, So in troth I (now) draw thee.(630) “I will rebuild thee, and built shalt thou be, 4 Maiden of Israel! “Again thou shalt take(631) thee thy timbrels And forth to the merrymen’s dances. “Again shall vineyards be planted(632) 5 On the hills of Samaria, “Planters shall surely plant them(?) And forthwith enjoy(633) (their fruit). “For comes the day when watchmen are calling 6 On Ephraim’s mountains: “Rise, let us go up to Ṣion, To the Lord our God.”

The everyday happiness promised is striking. Here speaks again the man, who, while ruin ran over the land, redeemed his ancestral acres in pledge of the resettlement of all his people upon their own farms and fields. He is back in the country, upon the landscapes of his youth, and in this fresh prospect of the restoration of Israel he puts first the common joys and fruitful labours of rural life, and only after these the national worship centred in Jerusalem. Cornill denies this last verse to Jeremiah, feeling it inconsistent with the Prophet’s condemnation of the Temple and the Sacrifices.(634) But that condemnation had been uttered by Jeremiah because of his contemporaries’ sinful use of the House of God, whereas now he is looking into a new dispensation. How could he more signally clinch the promise of that reunion of Israel and Judah, for which all his life he had longed, than by this call to them to worship together?

The next verses are not so recognisable as Jeremiah’s, unless it be in their last couplet. The rest rather reflect the Return from Exile as on the point of coming to pass, which happened long after Jeremiah’s time; and they call the nation _Jacob_, the name favoured by prophets of the end of the Exile.

[Ring out with joy for Jacob, 7 Shout for (?) the head of the nations,(635) Publish ye, praise ye and say, The Lord hath saved His(636) people, The Remnant of Israel! Behold from the North I bring them, 8 And gather from ends of the earth; Their blind and their lame together, The mother-to-be and her who hath borne. In concourse great back they come hither. With weeping forth did they go,(637) 9 With consolations(638) I bring them, I lead them by(639) streams of water, On an even way, They stumble not on it](640)

For a father I am become to Israel, And my first-born is Ephraim!

This couplet may well be Jeremiah’s; but whether it should immediately follow verse 6 is doubtful. The next lines are hardly his, bearing the same marks of the late exile as we have seen in verses 7-9_a_.

[Hear, O nations, the Word of the Lord, 10 And declare on the far-away isles(641): Who hath scattered Israel will gather, And guard as a shepherd his flock. For the Lord hath ransomed Jacob 11 And redeemed from the hand of the stronger than he. They are come and ring out on Mount Ṣion, 12 Radiant(642) all with the wealth of the Lord, With the corn, the new wine, the fresh oil, The young of the flock and the herd; Till their soul becomes as a garden well-watered, Nor again any more shall they pine. Then rejoice in the dance shall the maidens, 13 The youths and the old make merry.(643) When their mourning I turn to mirth(644) And give them joy from their sorrow. When I richly water the soul of the priests,(645) 14 And My folk with My bounty are filled— Rede of the Lord.]

The next poems no one denies to Jeremiah; they are among the finest we have from him. And how natural that he should conceive and utter them in those quiet days when he was at, or near, Ramah, the grave of the mother of the people.(646) He hears her century-long travail of mourning for the loss of the tribes that were sprung from her Joseph, aggravated now by the banishment of her Benjamin; but hears too the promise that her travail shall be rewarded by their return. The childless old man has the soul of mother and father both—now weeping with the comfortless Rachel and now, in human touches unmatched outside the Parable of the Prodigal, reading into the heart of God the same instinctive affections, to which, in spite of himself, every earthly father is stirred by the mere mention of the name of a rebellious and wandered son. The most vivid details are these: _after I had been brought to know_, which might also be translated _after I had been made to know myself_ and so anticipate _when he came to himself_ of our Lord’s Parable; _I smote on my thigh_, the gesture of despair; and in 20_a_ the very human attribution to the Deity of surprise that the mere name of Ephraim should move Him to affection, which recalls both in form and substance the similar question attributed to the Lord in XII. 9.

There is no reason to try, as some do, to correct in the poems their broken measures, for these both suit and add to the poignancy and tenderness which throb through the whole.(647)

Hark, in Ramah is heard lamentation 15 And bitterest weeping, Rachel beweeping her children, And will not be comforted,(648) For they are not. Thus saith the Lord: 16 Refrain thy voice from weeping, And from tears thine eyes, For reward there is for thy travail— They are back from the land of the foe! [And hope there is for thy future, 17 Thy sons come back to their border.](649)

I have heard, I have heard 18 Ephraim bemoaning, “Thou hast chastened me, chastened I am, Like a calf untrained. “Turn me Thyself, and return I will, For Thou art my God. “For after I had turned away (?)(650) 19 I repented ... (?) “And after I was brought to know,(651) I smote on my thigh. “I am shaméd, yea and confounded, As I bear the reproach of my youth.”(652)

Is Ephraim My dearest son,(653) 20 A child of delights? That as oft as against him I speak I must think of him still. My bowels for him are yearning, Pity him I must!—Rede of the Lord.

Set thee up way-marks, 21 Plant thyself guide-posts! Put to the highway thy heart, The way that thou wentest. Come back, O maiden of Israel, 22 Back to thy towns here. How long to drift hither and thither, Thou turn-about daughter! [For the Lord hath created a new thing on earth, A female shall compass a man.](654)

The next small poem, when we take from it certain marks of a later date is possibly Jeremiah’s, though this is not certain; to the previous Oracles on Ephraim it naturally adds one upon Judah.

Thus saith the Lord:(655) 23 Once more shall they speak this word. In Judah’s land and her towns, When I turn again their captivity: “The Lord thee bless, homestead of justice!”(656) In Judah and all her towns shall be dwelling 24 Tillers and they that roam with flocks, For I have refreshed the(657) weary soul, 25 And cheered every soul that was pining. [On this I awoke and beheld, 26 And sweet unto me was my sleep.](658)

Behold, are coming the days— 27 Rede of the Lord— When Israel and Judah(659) I sow With the seed of man and of beast; And it shall be, as I was wakeful upon them 28 To tear down and do evil,(660) So wakeful on them will I be, To build and to plant— Rede of the Lord.

These prophecies of the physical restoration of Israel and Judah are fitly followed by two, in what is rather rhythmical prose than verse, which define the moral and spiritual aspects of the new dispensation; both laying stress on individual responsibility, the one in ethics, 29, 30, the other in religion, 31 ff., the proclamation of The New Covenant. They are no doubt Jeremiah’s: we shall take them up in the last lecture.