Part 3 (2/2)

[And his heart from the Lord is turned]

Like some desert-scrub shall he be, Nor see any coming of good, But dwell in the aridest desert, A salt, uninhabited land.

Blessed the wight that trusts in the Lord, And the Lord is his trust!

He like a tree shall be planted by waters, That stretches its roots to the stream, Unafraid(73) at the coming of heat, His leaf shall be green.

Sans care in a year of drought, He fails not in yielding his fruit.

As here, so generally, the simplicity of the poet's diction is matched by that of his metaphors, similes, and parables. A girl and her ornaments, a man and his waist-cloth-thus he figures what ought to be the clinging relations between Israel and their G.o.d. The stunted desert-shrub in contrast to the river-side oaks, the incomparable olive, the dropped sheaf and even the dung upon the fields; the vulture, stork, crane and swift; the lion, wolf and spotted leopard coming up from the desert or the jungles of Jordan; the hinnying stallions and the heifer in her heat; the black Ethiopian, already familiar in the streets of Jerusalem, the potter and his wheel, the shepherd, plowman and vinedresser, the driver with his ox's yoke upon his shoulders; the harlot by the wayside; the light in the home and sound of the hand-mill-all everyday objects of his people's sight and hearing as they herded, ploughed, sowed, reaped or went to market in the city-he brings them in simply and with natural ease as figures of the truths he is enforcing. They are never bald or uncouth, though in translation they may sometimes sound so.

In the very bareness of his use of them there lurks an occasional irony as in the following-a pa.s.sage of prose broken by a single line of verse.(74) The Deity is addressing the prophet:-

And thou shalt say unto this people, ”Every jar shall be filled with wine,”

and it shall be if they say unto thee, ”Don't we know of course(75) that

”Every jar shall be filled with wine,”

then thou shalt say unto them: Thus saith the Lord, Lo, I am about to fill the inhabitants of this land, the kings and princes, the priests and prophets, even Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness [the drunkenness, that is, of horror at impending judgments] and I will dash them one against another, fathers and sons together. I will not pity, saith the Lord, nor spare nor have compa.s.sion that I should not destroy them.

How one catches the irritation of the crowd on being told what seems to them such a commonplace-till it is interpreted!

Like his fellow-prophets, whose moral atmosphere was as burning as their physical summer, who living on the edge of the desert under a downright sun _drew breath_ (as Isaiah puts it) _in the fear of the Lord_ and saw the world in the blaze of His justice, Jeremiah brings home to the hearts of his people the truths and judgments, with which he was charged, in the hard, hot realism of their austere world. Through his verse we see the barer landscapes of Benjamin and Judah without shadow or other relief, every ugly detail exposed by the ruthless noon, and beyond them the desert hills s.h.i.+mmering through the heat. Drought, famine, pestilence and especially war sweep over the land and the ghastly prostrate things, human as well as animal, which their skirts leave behind are rendered with vividness, poignancy and horror of detail.

Take, to begin with, the following, XIV. 1 ff.:-

_The Word of the Lord to Jeremiah Concerning the Drought._

Jerusalem's cry is gone up, Judah is mourning, The gates thereof faint in Black grief to the ground.

Her n.o.bles sent their menials for water, They came to the pits; Water found none and returned, Empty their vessels.

[Abashed and confounded They cover their heads.](76)

The tillers(77) of the ground are dismayed, For no rain hath been(78); And abashed are the ploughmen, They cover their heads.

The hind on the moor calves and abandons, For the gra.s.s has not come.

On the bare heights stand the wild a.s.ses, Gasping for air With glazen eyes- Herb there is none!

Though our sins do witness against us, Lord act for the sake of Thy Name!

[For many have been our backslidings, 'Fore Thee have we sinned.]

Hope of Israel, His Saviour In time of trouble, Why be like a traveller(79) through the land, Or wayfaring guest of a night?

Why art Thou as one that is stunned,- Strong yet unable to save?

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