y be a prediction on the eve of that disaster
to _the branches_ of the nation, which the nation as a whole survived.

This leads to another and more difficult question. Jeremiah has spoken
doom on the Temple and the Nation; has he come to doubt the Law-Book
itself or any part of it? As to that there are two passages one of which
speaks of a falsification of the Law by its guardians, while the other
denies the Divine origin not only of the deuteronomic but of all
sacrifices and burnt offerings.

Even before the discovery of the Law-Book the young prophet had said of
_those who handle the Law_ that _they did not know the Lord_.(292) And now
in an Oracle, apparently of date after the discovery, he charges the
scribes with manipulating _the Law_, the _Torah_, so as to turn it to
falsehood. The Oracle is addressed to the people of whom he has just said
that they do not know _the Rule, the Mishpat, of the Lord_.

How say you, "We are the Wise, VIII. 8
The Law of the Lord is with us."
But lo, the falsing pen of the scribes
Hath wrought it to falsehood.

_Torah_, literally _direction_ or _instruction_, is either a single law or
a body of law, revealed by God through priests or prophets, for the
religious and moral practice of men. Here it is some traditional or
official form of such law, for which the people have rejected the Word of
the Lord--His living Word by the prophets of the time (verse 9).

Put to shame are the wise, 9
Dismayed and taken.
Lo, they have spurned the Word of the Lord--
What wisdom is theirs?

Was this _Torah_ oral or written? And if written was it the discovered
Book of the _Torah_, which in part at least was our Deuteronomy?

So far as the text goes the original _Torah_ may have been either oral or
written, and the scribes have _falsified_ it, by amplification or
distortion,(293) either when reducing it for the first time to writing or
when copying and editing it from an already written form. This leaves open
these further questions. If written was the _Torah_ the very _Book of the
Torah_ discovered in the Temple in 621-20? And if so did the falsification
affect the whole or only part of the Book? To these questions some answer
No, on the ground of Jeremiah's assent to _this Covenant_, and the command
to him to proclaim it.(294) Others answer Yes; in their view Jeremiah was
opposed to the deuteronomic system as a whole, or at least to the detailed