reproduces from memory and dictates all the words which the Lord
has spoken to him."(34) There is no trace of miracle in the story. It is a
straight tale of credible transactions, very natural (as we have seen) at
the crisis which the Prophet had reached. No improbability infects it, no
reflection of a later time, no idealising as by a writer at a distance
from the events he recounts. On the contrary it gives a number of details
which only a contemporary could have supplied. Nor can we forget the power
and accuracy of an Oriental's memory, especially at periods when writing
was not a common practice.

There is, of course, more room for difference of opinion as to the
contents of each of the successive Rolls, and as to how much of these
contents is included in our Book of Jeremiah. But to such questions the
most probable answer is as follows.

There cannot have been many of the Prophet's previous Oracles on the first
Roll. This was read three times over in the same day and was probably
limited to such Oracles as were sufficient for its practical purpose of
moving the people of Judah to repentance at a Fast, when their hearts
would be most inclined that way. But when the first Roll was destroyed,
the immediate occasion for which it was written was past, and the second
Roll would naturally have a wider aim. It repeated the first, but in view
of the additions to it seems to have been dictated with the purpose of
giving a permanent form to _all_ the fruits of Jeremiah's previous
ministry. The battle of Carchemish had confirmed his predictions and put
edge upon them. The destruction of the Jewish people was imminent and the
Prophet's own life in danger. His enforced retirement along with Baruch
lent him freedom to make a larger selection, if not the full tale, of his
previous prophecies. Hence the phrase _there were added many words like_
those on the first Roll.(35)

If such a Roll as the second existed in the care of Baruch then the use of
it in the compilation of our Book of Jeremiah is extremely probable, and
the probability is confirmed by some features of the Book. Among the
Oracles which can be assigned to Jeremiah's activity before the fourth
year of Jehoiakim there is on the whole more fidelity to chronological
order than in those which were delivered later, and while the former are
nearly all given without narrative attached to them, and are reported as
from Jeremiah himself in the first person, the latter for the