a rustic. It has been deemed the
exaggeration of a later age, and described as the "gigantic figure" of a
"plenipotentiary to the nations," utterly inconsistent with the modest
singer of the genuine oracles of Jeremiah, "a hero only in suffering, not
in assault."(127) Such an objection rather strains the meaning of the
passage. According to this Jeremiah is to be the carrier of the Word of
the Lord. That Word, rather than the man himself, is the power _to pull up
and tear down and destroy, to build and to plant_(128)--that Word which no
Hebrew prophet received without an instinct of its world-wide range and
its powers of both destruction and creation.

Two visions follow. To appreciate the first we must remember the natural
anxiety of the prophets when charged with pronouncements so weighty and
definite. The Word, the ethical purpose of God for Israel was clear, but
how was it to be fulfilled? No strength appeared in the nation itself. The
party, or parties, loyal to the Lord had been in power a dozen years and
effected little in Jerusalem and nothing beyond. The people were not
stirred and seemed hopeless. Living in a village where little changed
through the years, but men followed the habits of their fathers, Jeremiah
felt everything dead. Winter was on and the world asleep.

Then the Word of the Lord came to me saying, What art thou seeing,
Jeremiah; and I said, I am seeing the branch of an almond tree.
And the Lord said to me, Well hast thou seen, for I am awake over
My Word to perform it.

The Hebrew for almond tree is _shakedh_, which also means _awakeness_ or
_watchfulness_,(129) and the Lord was _awake_ or was
_watchful_--_shokedh_--the difference only of a vowel. In that first token
of spring which a Palestine winter affords, the Prophet received the
sacrament of his call and of the assurance that God was awake! That the
sacrament took this form was natural. That of Isaiah of Jerusalem was the
vision of a Throne and an Altar. That of Ezekiel, the exile, shone in the
stormy skies of his captivity. This to the prophet of Anathoth burst with
the first blossom on his wintry fields. The sense of unity in which he and
his people conceived the natural and spiritual worlds came to his help;
neither in the one world nor in the other did God slumber. God was
watching.

The Second Vision needs no comment after our survey of the political
conditions of the time. The North held the forces for the fulf