her
they be Jeremiah's or not; our versions of them, Authorised and Revised,
are sufficiently clear.

But there follow, from VIII. 4 onwards, after the usual introduction, a
series of metrical Oracles of which the following translation is offered
in observance of the irregularity of the measures of the original. Note
how throughout the Prophet is, as before, testing his false
people--_heeding_ and _listening_ are his words--finding no proof of a
genuine repentance and bewailing the doom that therefore must fall upon
them. Some of his earlier verses are repeated, and there is the reference
to the Law, VIII. 8 f., which we have discussed.(368) There is also a hint
of exile--which, however, is still future.

In Ch. VIII, verses 4-12 (including the repetitions they contain) seem a
unity; verse 13 stands by itself (unless it goes with the preceding); 14,
15 echo one of the Scythian songs, but the fear they reflect may be that
either of an Egyptian invasion after Megiddo or of a Chaldean; 16 and 17
are certainly of a northern invasion, but whether the same as the
preceding is doubtful; and doubtful too is the connection of both with the
incomparable elegy which follows--VIII. 18-IX. 1. For IX. 1 undoubtedly
belongs to this, as the different division of the chapters in the Hebrew
text properly shows. In Ch. IX. 2-9 the Prophet is in another mood than
that of the preceding songs. There the miseries of his people had
oppressed him; here it is their sins. There his heart had been with them
and he had made their sufferings his own; here he would flee from them to
a lodge in the desert.(369) IX. 10-12, is another separate dirge on the
land, burned up but whether by invaders or by drought is not clear. Then
13-16 is a passage of prose. In 17-22 we have still another elegy with
some of the most haunting lines Jeremiah has given us, on war or
pestilence, or both. And there follow eight lines, verses 23-24, on a very
different, a spiritual, theme, and then 25-26 another prose passage, on
the futility of physical circumcision if the heart be not circumcised. If
these be Jeremiah's, and there is no sign in them to the contrary, they
form further evidence of his originality as a prophet.

The two Chs. VIII and IX are thus a collection both of prose passages and
poems out of different circumstances and different moods, with little
order or visible connection. Are we to see in them a number of those _many
like words_ which Jeremiah, when