on, an intensified interest in the details of the future contributed to heighten the estimation of Jeremiah's works (Dan. ix. 2; comp. 2 Chron. xxvi. 21); und several traces of the extraordinary respect in which this prophet was held appear in the Apocrypha (2 l\faec. ii. 1-7; xv. 14; Epist. Jer.) and in the Gospel narrative (Matt. xvi. 14; John i. 21). Another point in whieh Jeremiah marks an epoch in prophecy is hi~ peculiar fondness for symbolic acts ( e.g. eh. xiii. 1 ; xvi. 1 ; xviii. 1 ; xix. 1; xxiv. 1; xxv. 15; xxxv. 1). This is a subject fraught with difficulty, and the question may reasonably be asked whether his accounts of such trans- actions are to be taken literally, or whether they are simply visions trans- lated into ordinary narrative, or even altogether imaginary-recognized rhetorical fictions. We must remember that the flourishing age of prophecy is over, the age when the public work of a prophet was still the chief part of his ministry, and the age of decline is come, in which the quiet work of laying up a store of testimony for the next generation has acquired greater importai:::.ce. The chapter with Jeremiah's going to the Euphrates and hiding a girdle "in a hole of the rock" till it became good for nothing, and then taking another journey thither to fetch it again, is no doubt rendered more intelligible by reading "Ephrath" instead of P'rath, i.e. "the Euphrates" (eh. xiii. 4--7); but the difficulty is, perhaps, not entirely removed. JHay not this narrative (and that in eh. xxxv.) be regarded as fictitious with fully as much ground as the equally positive statement in eh. xxv. 17, "Then took I the cup at Jehovah's hand, and made all the nations to drink"? There is yet another important feature for the student to notice in Jeremiah-the diminishing emphasis on the advent of the Messiah, i.e. of the great ideal victorious King, through whom the whole world was to be brought into subjection to Jehovah. Though still found-at the end of a passage on the bad kings Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin (eh. xxiii. 5), and in the promises given shortly before the fall of Jerusalem (eh. xxx. 9, 21; xxxiii. 15)-the personal Messiah is no longer the centre of prophecy as in Isaiah and Micah. In Zephaniah he is not mentioned at all. It seems as if, in the decline of the state, royalty had ceased to be an adequate symbol for the great Personage to whom all prophecy points. Every one remembers that, in the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, the great Deliverer is spoken of, not as a King, but as a persuasive Teacher, reviled by his own country- men, and exposed to suffering and death, but in and through his sufferings atoning for and justifying all those who believed in him. Jeremiah does not allude to this great Servant of Jehovah in words, but his revelation of a new and spiritual covenant requires the prophecy of the Servant for its explanati0n. How is the Law of the Lord to be written in th'3 hearts of a. rebellions and depraved humanity? How, except by the atoning death of the humble, but after his death royally exalted, Saviour? Jeremiah prepared the way for the coming of Christ, partly by his putting out of sight the too dazzling regal conception which prevented men from realizing xiv INTRODUCTION TO
the deeper c,Rngelical truths smnruetl up in the prophecy of the "Sorvant of the Lord." lt ought to be added (auLl this is another respect in which Jeremiah is a remarkable waymark in the Old Testament dispemation) that he prepared the way of Christ by his own typical life. He stood alone, with few friends and no family joys to console him (eh. xvi. 2). His country was hastening to its ruin, at a crisis which strikingly reminds us of the times of the Saviour. He lifted up a warning voice, but the natural guides of the people drowned it by their blind opposition. In his utter self-abnegation, too, he reminds us of the Lord, in whose human nature a strong feminine clement cannot be mistaken. Doubtless he had a less balanced mind ; how should this not be the case, for we are speaking of him in relation to the unique, incomparable One? But there are moments in the life of Jesus when the lyrical note is as clearly marked as in the utterances of Jeremiah. The prophet weeping over Zion ( eh. ix. 1 ; xiii. 17; xiv. 17) is an adumbration of the sacred tears in Luke xix. 41; and the suggestions of the life of Jeremiah in the great prophetic life of Christ (Isa. liii.) are so distinct as to have induced Saadyab the Jew (tenth century A.D.) and Bunsen the Christian to suppose that the original reference was simply and solely to the prophet.1 It is strange that the most esteemed Christian writers should have dwelt so little on this typical character of Jeremiah; but it is one proof of the richness of the Old Testament that so striking a type should have been reserved for later and less conventional students. 5. The literary merits of Jeremiah have been frequently contested. He is accused of Aramaizing diction, of diffuseness, monotony, imitativeness,2 proneness to repetition,8 and to the use of stereotyped formulre; ' nor can these charges be denied. Jeremiah was not an artist in words, as to some extent was Isaiah. His poetic flights were restrained by his presentiments; his utterance was choked by tears. How could he exercise his imagination on depicting woes which he already so fully realized? or vary a theme of such unchanging importance? Even from a literary point of view, however, his unpretending simplicity is not to be despised; as Ewald has already 1emarked, it forms a pleasing contrast (be it said with all reverence to the Spirit common to all the prophets) to the artificial style of Habakkuk. But 1 Grotius, with a true iustiuct, remarks, " IIlB notre in Jeremiam quidcm congr1111nt
prius, 800 potius sublimiusque, srepe et magis o:«Ta. ll.•fw, in Christum." 2 f'.'ee the Commentary, passim.
• i, i;eneo (' l:list.orioeh-kritiBch Onderzoek,' vol. ii. 248) gives a.long list ofalmost identical 1,aasa0 cs, from whicL I take the commencement: eh. i. 18, 19 (xv. 20); ii. 15 (iv. 7); ii. 28 (xi.13); iv.5(\'ii,.IJ); iv.6(vL1); v.9(29;i.x.8); vi.13-15(viii.10-12); vi.22-24 (L 41-43); vii. l G (xi. 14; xiv. 11); vii. 31-33 (.rix. 5-7; nxii. 35); vii. 33 (xiL 7; xvi 4; =-xiv. :.!0). • Such are-" sword, famine, and pestilence," or" sword and famine" (eh. xiv. 12-16; xv. 2; xvi. 4; :s:xi. 7, 9; x.xiv. 16; :u:vii. 8, 13; and twelve other passages); "the voice ot mirth and the voice of gladness " (eh. vii. 3-1 ; ni. 9 ; x xv. 10) ; " terror on every aide " (oh. vi. 25 ; xx. :;, I O; xl vi. 5; xli.x. 29); " leecl witb worm woocl, and give water ot gall to drink" (,h. viii. H; ix. 15; niii. 15). THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAlL xv