called. His family has been
discounted, his people and their authorities, political and religious, are
to be against him. _He_ is to stand up and speak, _He_ is not to let
himself be dismayed before them, lest God make him dismayed. Under God,
then, the Individual becomes everything. Here, at the start of his
ministry, Jeremiah has pressed upon him, the separateness, the awful
responsibility, the power, of the Single Soul. We shall see how the
significance of this developed not for himself only, but for the whole
religion of Israel.

Lecture IV.

THE PROPHET IN THE REIGN OF JOSIAH. 627-26-608 B.C.

This period of the Prophet's career may be taken in three divisions:--

_First_, His Earliest Oracles, which reflect the lavish distribution of
the high-places in Judah and Benjamin, and may therefore be dated before
the suppression of these by King Josiah, in obedience to the Law-Book
discovered in the Temple in 621-20 B.C.

_Second_, His Oracles on the Scythians, whose invasions also preceded that
year; with additions.

_Third_, Oracles which imply that the enforcement of the Law-Book had
already begun, and reveal Jeremiah's attitude to it and to the course of
the reforms which it inspired.

We must keep in mind that the Prophet did not dictate his early Oracles
till the year 604-03, and that he added to them on the Second Roll _many
like words_.(136) We shall thus be prepared for the appearance among them
of references to the changed conditions of this later date, when the
Scythians had long come and gone, the Assyrian Empire had collapsed, its
rival Egypt had been defeated at the Battle of Carchemish, and
Nebuchadrezzar and his Chaldeans were masters of Western Asia.

1. His Earliest Oracles. (II. 2-IV. 4.)

These bear few marks of the later date at which they were dictated by
Jeremiah--in fact only a probable reference to Egypt's invasion of
Palestine in 608, Ch. II. 16, and part, if not all, of Ch. III. 6-18. The
general theme is a historical retrospect--Israel's early loyalty to her
God, and her subsequent declension to the worship of other gods, figured
as adultery; along with a profession of penitence by the people, to which
God responds by a stern call to a deeper repentance and thorough reform;
failing this, her doom, though vaguely described as yet, is inevitable.
The nation is addressed as a whole at first in the second person singular
feminine, but soo