) Ecclesiasticus XLIX. 6-7 reflects passages of
our Book, and of Lamentations, as though equally Jeremiah's, and Daniel
IX. 2 refers to Jeremiah XXV. 12. A paragraph in the Second Book of
Maccabees, Ch. II. 1-8, contains, besides echoes of our Book of Jeremiah,
references to other activities of the Prophet of which the sources and the
value are unknown to us. But all these references, as well as the series
of apocryphal and apocalyptic works to which the name either of Jeremiah
himself or of Baruch, his scribe, has been attached,(5) only reveal the
length of the shadow which the Prophet's figure cast down the ages, and
contribute no verifiable facts to our knowledge of his career or of his
spiritual experience.

For the actual life of Jeremiah, for the man as he was to himself and his
contemporaries, for his origin, character, temper, struggles, growth and
modes of expression, we have practically no materials beyond the Canonical
Book to which his name is prefixed.(6)

Roughly classified the contents of the Book (after the extended title in
Ch. I. 1-3) are as follows:--

1. A Prologue, Ch. I. 4-19, in which the Prophet tells the story of his
call and describes the range of his mission as including both his own
people and foreign nations. The year of his call was 627-6 B.C.

2. A large number of Oracles, dialogues between the Prophet and the Deity
and symbolic actions by the Prophet issuing in Oracles, mostly introduced
as by Jeremiah himself, but sometimes reported of him by another. Most of
the Oracles are in verse; the style of the rest is not distinguishable by
us from prose. They deal almost exclusively with the Prophet's own people
though there are some references to neighbouring tribes. The bulk of this
class of the contents is found within Chs. II-XXV, which contain all the
earlier oracles, i.e. those uttered by Jeremiah before the death of King
Josiah in 608, but also several of his prophecies under Jehoiakim and even
Sedekiah. More of the latter are found within Chs. XXVII-XXXV: all these,
except XXVIII and part of XXXII, which are introduced by the Prophet
himself, are reported by another.

3. A separate group of Oracles on Foreign Nations, Chs. XLVI-LI, reported
to us as Jeremiah's.

4. A number of narratives of episodes in the Prophet's life from 608
onwards under Jehoiakim and Sedekiah to the end in Egypt, soon after 586;
apparently by a contemporary and eyewitness who on good grounds is
generally tak