(oh. xliv. 17-19). What answer could Jeremiah make? His mission to that generation was closed. He could only console himself with that heroic faith which was one of his most striking qualities. During the siege of Jerusalem he had, with a Roman belief in his country's destinies, purchased a piece of ground at no great. distance from the capital ( eh. xxxii. 6-15) ; and it was after the fate of the city was sealed that he rose to the highest pitch of religious enthnsiasm, when he uttered that memorable promise of a new and spiritual covenant in which the external helps of prophecy and a written Law should be dispensed with (eh. xxxi. 31-34). And in this heaven-born assurance of the immortality and spiritual regeneration of his people he persisted to the end. 4. It was impossible to avoid giving a brief abrstract of Jeremiah's pro phetic career, beoam;,e his book is to such a large extent autobiographical. He cannot limit himself to reproducing "the word of the Lord; " his individual nature is too strong for him, and asserts its right of expression. His life was a constant alternation between the action of the" burning fire" of revelation (eh. xx. 9), and the reaction of human sensibilities. Truly has it been observed that "Jeremiah has a kind of feminine tenderness ancl susceptibility; strength was to be educed out of a spirit which was inclined to be timid and shrinking; " and again that" he was a loving, priestly spirit, who felt the unbelief and sin of his nation as a heavy, overwhelming burden." Who does not remember those touching words?- " Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician tbere? Why then bath not healing appeared for the daughter of my people? Oh that my head were water, and mine eye a four.tain of tears, That I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" (Oh. viii. 22; il:. 1.) And again- " Let mine eyes run down with tears day and night,1 And let them not cease : For the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, With a very grievous blow." (Oh. xiv. 17.) In this respect Jeremiah marks an epoch in the history of prophecy. Isaiah and the prophets of his generation are fully absorbed in their nessage, and allow no space to the exhibition of personal feeling. In Jeremiah, on the other hand, the element of human feeling is constantly overpowering the prophetic. But let not Jeremiah be disparaged, and let not those triumph over him who are gifted with greater power of self- repression. Self-repression does not always imply the absence of selfishness, whereas J eremiah's demonstrativeness is not called forth by purely personal troubles, b11t by those of God's people. The words of Jesus, "Ye would 1 This has been well brought out in Keble's verses ou Jeremiah(' Lyra Apostolioa '). xii IN'l'RODUCTION TO
not," a.nd "But now they are hid from thine oyes," might, as Delitzsoh remarks, be placed as mottoes to the Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah's rich individual consciousness extends its influence over his conception of religion, which, without being less practical, has become more inward and spiritual than Isaiah's. The main object of his preaching is to communicate this deeper conception (expressed, aboYe all, in his doctrine of the covenant, see on eh. xxxi. 31-34) to his countrymen. And if they will not receive it in the peace and comfort of their Judrean home, then -welcome ruin, welcome captivity! By uttering this solemn truth ( eh. x:xxi. )-that a period of enforced seclusion was necessary before Israel could rise to the height of his grand mission---Joremiah preserved the spiritual independence of his people, and prepared the way for a still higher and more spiritual and evangelical religion. The next generation instinctively recognized this. Not a few of those psalms which belong most probably to the Captivity (especially Ps. xxii., xxxi., xl., Iv., lxix., lxxi.) are so per- vaded with the spirit of Jeremiah that several writers have ascribed them to the pen of this prophet. The question is a complicated one, and the solution can hardly be so simple as these writers appear to suppose. We have to deal with the fact that there is a large body of Biblical litera- ture impregnated with the spirit, and consequently filled with many of the expressions, of Jeremiah. 'l'he Books of Kings, the Book of Job, the second part of Isaiah, the Lamentations/ are, with the psalms mentioned above, the chief items of this literature; and while, on the one hand, no one would dream of assigning all these to Jeremiah, there seems, on the other, to be no sufficient reason for giving one of them to the great prophet rather than the other. With regard to the circumstantial parallels in the above-named psalms to passages in the life of Jeremiah, it may be observed (1) that other pious Israelites had a similar lot of persecution to Jeremiah (of. Micah vii. 2; Isa. lvii. 1); (2) that figurative expressions like "sinking in the mire and in the deep water" (Ps. lxix. 2, 14) require no groundwork of literal biographical fact (not to remind realistic critics that there was no water in Jeremiah's prison, eh. xxx.viii. 6); and (3) that none of the psalms ascribed to Jeremiah allude to his prophetic office, or to the conflict with the "false prophets," which must have occupied so much of his thoughts. Still, the fact that some diligent students of the Scriptures have ascribed this group of psalms to Jeremiah is an index of the close affinities existing on either side. So, too, the Book of Job may be more than plausibly referred to as influenced by Jeremiah. The tendency of careful criticism is to hold that the author of Job selects a passionate utterance of Jerewiah's for the theme of his afflicted hero's first discourse ( Job iii. 3; comp. eh. xx. 14); and it is difficult to e,·ade the impression that a feature in the deepest prophecy of the second part of Isaiah is suggested by Jeremiah's pathetic comparison of himself to a lamb led to the slaughter (Isa. Iii. 7; comp. eh. xi. 19). Later 1 On the question whether Jeremiah really wrote the Lnmentntions, Old Testameni
scholars are divided. '!'HE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ,JEREMIAlI. xiii