o all that I command you, and ye
shall be to Me a people, and I will be God to you; [5] in order to
establish the oath which I sware unto your fathers, to give them a
land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day. 6. And I
answered and said, Amen, O Lord! 7. And the Lord said unto me,
Proclaim(274) these words in the cities of Judah and in the
streets of Jerusalem, saying, [8] Hear ye the words of this
Covenant and do them, but they did them not.(275)

The story has its difficulties. It is undated; it is followed by verses
9-17, apparently from the reign of Jehoiakim; what the Prophet is called
to hear and gives his solemn assent to is generally described as _this
Covenant_; and in verses 7 and 8 there is what may be a mere editorial
addition since the Greek Version omits it, which has led some to assert
the editorial character of the whole. But for the reasons given above,
there is no cause to doubt the substantial truthfulness of the story,
unless with Duhm we were capable of believing that Jeremiah never spoke in
prose, nor can be conceived as, at any time in his life the advocate of
what was a legal as well as a prophetic book. Of the first of these
assertions we have already disposed;(276) the second is met by the fact
that what Jeremiah was called to assent to was not a legal programme but a
spiritual covenant, of which ethical obedience alone was stated as the
condition. In Josiah's reign what else could _this Covenant_ mean than the
Covenant set forth in the recently discovered Book of the Law and solemnly
avouched by the whole people?(277) That its essence was spiritual and
ethical is expressed in the Deuteronomic phrases which follow, and the
quotation of these is most relevant to the occasion. Nor do the
recollections, the command and the promise which they convey go beyond
what Jeremiah had already enforced in his earlier Oracles.(278)

Therefore we may believe that, as recorded, Jeremiah heard in the heart of
Deuteronomy the call of God, that he uttered his Amen to it; and that,
from his experience of the evils of the high-places, he felt obliged, as
he also records, to proclaim _this Covenant_ throughout Judah.(279)

In the same chapter as the charge to the Prophet concerning _this
Covenant_ there is mention of a conspiracy against his life by the men of
Anathoth, XI. 21. Some suppose that these were enraged by his support of
reforms which abolished rural sanctuaries like