And let fall sudden upon them
Anguish and terrors.(436)
She that bare seven hath fainted, 9
Breathes out her life,
Set is her sun in the daytime
Shamed and abashed!
And their remnant I give to the sword
In face of their foes!(437)

Through the rest of Ch. XV and through XVI and XVII are a number of those
personal passages, which I have postponed to a subsequent lecture upon
Jeremiah's spiritual struggles,(438) and also several passages which by
outlook and phrasing belong to a later age. The impression left by this
miscellany is that of a collection of sayings put together by an editor
out of some Oracles by our Prophet himself and deliverances by other
prophets on the same or similar themes. In pursuance of the plan I
proposed I take now only those passages in which Jeremiah deals with the
character of his people and their deserved doom.

Thus saith the Lord-- XVI. 5
Come not to the home of mourning,
Nor go about to lament,(439)
For my Peace I have swept away--
Away from this people.(440)
Nor enter the house of feasting, 8
To sit with them eating and drinking
For thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel; 9
Lo, I make to cease from this place,
To your eyes, in your days,
The voices of joy and rejoicing,
The voices of bridegroom and bride.

There follows a passage in prose, 10-13, which in terms familiar to us,
recites the nation's doom, their exile. Verses 14, 15 break the connection
with 16 ff., and find their proper place in XXIII. 7-8, where they recur.
Verses 16-18 predict, under the figures of fishers and hunters, the
arrival of bands of invaders, who shall sweep the country of its
inhabitants, because of the idolatries with which these have polluted it.
There is no reason to deny these verses to Jeremiah. In 19, 20 we come to
another metrical piece, singing of the conversion of the heathen from
their idols--the only piece of its kind from Jeremiah--which we may more
suitably consider later. Verse 21 seems more in place after 18.

The sin of Judah is writ XVII. 1
With pen of iron,
With the point of a diamond graven
On the plate of their heart--
And eke on the horns of their altars,(441)
And each spreading tree,
Upon all the lofty heights 2
And hills of the wild
Thy substance and all thy treasures 3
For spoil I give,
Because of sin thy high places