seventh month.

All praise to Baruch for his concise and vivid report, and to the Greek
translator who has reproduced it! The editors of the Hebrew text have
diluted its strength.

With this narrative we are bound to take the section of the Book entitled
_Of the Prophets_, XXIII. 9-32. The text is in parts uncertain, and
includes obvious expansions. These removed, we can fairly distinguish a
continuous metrical form up to 29, with the exception perhaps of 25-27.
The metre is sometimes irregular enough to raise the suggestion(530) that
the whole is rhetorical prose, between which and metre proper it is often
hard, as we have seen, to draw the line. But we have also learned how
often and how naturally irregular, when the subject requires it,
Jeremiah's metres tend to become. So I have ventured, with the help of the
Greek, to render the whole as metre, in which form are parts beyond doubt.
Verses 18 and 30-32 are in prose, and both, but more probably the former,
may be later additions, as are 19, 20, and clauses in 9, 10.

There is no reason against taking the remainder as Oracles by Jeremiah
himself. No dates are given them; they probably come from various stages
of his ministry, for he early found out the false prophets, and his
experience of them and their errors lasted to the end. But probably this
collection of the Oracles was made under Sedekiah; that Baruch gathered it
still later is not so likely.

Of the prophets:-- XXIII. 9
Broken my heart within me,
All pithless my bones.
I'm become like a drunken man
Like a wight overcome with wine.(531)
Of adulterers the land is full 10
Their course it is evil,(532)
Their might not right.
For prophet and priest alike 11
Are utterly godless.(533)
E'en in My House their evil I find--
Rede of the Lord.
Therefore their way shall they have 12
In slippery places,
Thrust shall they be into darkness(534)
And fall therein,
When I bring calamity on them,
The year of their visitation.
In Samaria's prophets I saw the unseemly, 13
By Baal they prophesied.(535)
In Jerusalem's prophets I see the horrible-- 14
Adultery, walking in lies.
They strengthen the hands of ill-doers,
That none from his wickedness turns.
To Me they are all like Sodom,
Like Gomorra her(536) dwellers!
Therefore thus saith the Lord:(537) 15
Behold, I will feed