Part 9 (1/2)

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.