shall I visit them--Rede of the
Lord--till they be consumed at his hand (?). 9. But ye, hearken ye
not to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your
dreamers,(515) nor to your soothsayers, nor to your sorcerers, who
say, "Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon"; [10] for they
prophesy a lie unto you, to the result of removing you far from
your own soil. 11. But the nation which brings its neck into the
yoke of the king of Babylon and serves him, I will let it rest on
its own soil and it shall till this and abide within it.

This is followed by a similar Oracle to Sedekiah himself, 12-15, and by
another, 16-22, to the priests concerning a matter of peculiar anxiety to
them.

16. Thus saith the Lord, Hearken ye not to the words of the(516)
prophets, who prophesy to you saying, Behold, the vessels of the
Lord's House shall be brought back from Babylon; for a lie are
they prophesying to you. I have not sent them.(517) 18. But if
prophets they be, and if the Word of the Lord is with them, let
them now plead with Me [that the vessels left in the House of the
Lord come not to Babylon]. 19. Yet thus saith the Lord concerning
the residue of the vessels, [20] which the king of Babylon did not
take when he carried Jeconiah into exile from Jerusalem, [22] unto
Babylon shall they be brought--Rede of the Lord.

The Hebrew text concludes with a prophecy of the restoration of the
vessels, which had it been in the original the Greek translators could
hardly have omitted, and which is therefore probably a _post factum_
insertion. Not only, then, were the sacred vessels taken away in 597 to
remain in Babylon, but such as were still left in Jerusalem would also be
carried thither. It is possible that this address is now out of place and
should follow the next chapter, XXVIII, which deals only with the vessels
carried off in 597. Like the Hebrew the Greek text gives XXVIII a separate
introduction which dates it in the fifth month of the fourth year of
Sedekiah, but omits the Hebrew statement that the year was the same as
that of the events and words recorded in XXVII. The extent of the
differences between the Hebrew and Greek continues to be at least as great
as before,(518) as a comparison will show between the Authorised Version
and the following rendering which adheres to the Greek.

Jeremiah was still wearing his symbolic yoke of wood and thongs in t