fill and they whored,
And trooped to the house of the harlot.
Rampant(225) stallions they be, 8
Neighing each for the wife of his friend.
Shall I not visit on such, 9
Rede of the Lord,
Nor on a people like this
Myself take vengeance?

Up to her vine-rows, destroy, 10
And make(226) a full end,
Away with her branches,
They are not the Lord's.
For betraying they have betrayed Me 11
Judah and Israel both [Rede of the Lord]
The Lord they have belied, 12
Saying "Not He!
Evil shall never come on us,
Nor famine nor sword shall we see.
"The prophets! they are nothing but wind 13
The Word is not with them!"(227)

14. Therefore thus hath the Lord of Hosts said, because of their
speaking this word--(228)

Behold I am setting My Word
In thy mouth for fire,
And this people for wood,
And it shall devour them.

5. The Fifth Song upon the Scythians, Ch. V. 15-17, besides still leaving
them nameless, emphasises their strangeness to Israel's world. There was a
common language in Western Asia, Aramean, the _lingua franca_ of traders
from Nineveh to Memphis; and Jew, Assyrian and Egyptian conversed in it.
But the tongue of these raiders from over the Caucasus was unintelligible.
Yet how they would set their teeth into the land! Mixed with the verses
which thus describe them are others which suit not them but the Chaldeans
and must have been added by the Prophet in 604. A people so new to the
Jews might hardly have been called by Jeremiah _an ancient nation, from of
old a nation_, and in fact these phrases are wanting in the Greek version.

Behold, I am bringing upon you V. 15
A nation from far,
[O house of Israel, Rede of the Lord
An ancient nation it is,
From of old a nation.](229)
A nation thou knowest not its tongue, 16
Nor canst hear what it says,
Its quiver an open grave,(230)
All of it stalwarts.(231)
It shall eat up thy harvest and bread, 17
Eat thy sons and thy daughters,
It shall eat up thy flocks and thy cattle,
Eat thy vines and thy figs.
It shall beat down thy fortified towns,
Wherein thou dost trust, with the sword.

The last couplet is unsuitable to the Scythians, incapable as they were of
sieges and avoiding fortified towns--though once they rushed Askalon. It is
probably, therefore, another of