f Hosts in threatening Judah with them! Yet some
still refuse to credit the story of his Call, that from the first he heard
himself appointed as a prophet _to the nations_.(257)

This section of Jeremiah's earlier Oracles concludes with one addressed to
himself, Ch. VI. 27-30. It describes the task assigned him during the most
of his time under Josiah, whether before the discovery and promulgation of
the Book of the Law in 621-20, or subsequently to this while he watched
the nation's new endeavour to repent and reform. During the years from
621-20 till 608 when Josiah was defeated and slain at Megiddo, there can
have been but little for him to do except to follow, as his searching eyes
and detached mind alone in Israel could follow, the great venture of Judah
in obedience to the Book of the Law. For this interval the outside world
had ceased to threaten Israel. The Assyrian control of her was relaxed:
the people of God were free, and had their first opportunity for over a
century to work out their own salvation.

Assayer among My people I set thee,(258) 27
To know and assay their ways,
All of them utterly recreant, 28
Gadding about to slander.
Brass and iron are all of them(?),
Wasters they be!
Fiercely blow the bellows, 29
The lead is consumed of the fire(?)
In vain does the smelter smelt,
Their dross(259) is not drawn.
"Refuse silver" men call them,
For the Lord hath refused them.(260)

To take these lines as subsequent to the institution of Deuteronomy and
expressive of the judgment of the Prophet upon the failure of the
reformation under Josiah to reach the depth of a real repentance,(261) is
unnecessary. The young Jeremiah had already tested his people and in his
earliest Oracles reached conclusions as hopeless as that here. At least he
had already been called to test the people; and in next section we shall
see how he continued to fulfil his duty after the discovery of
Deuteronomy, and onwards through the attempts at reformation which it
inspired.

3. Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. (Chs. VII, VIII. 8, XI.)

We are not told when or why Jeremiah left Anathoth for Jerusalem. His
early poem denouncing the citizens(262) reveals a close observation of
their morals but no trace of the reforms begun by Josiah soon after 621
B.C. Some therefore hold that he had settled in the City before that
year.(263) Anathoth, however, lay so near Jerusalem t