o Egypt.
There, with his back to the brief ministry of hope that had been allowed
him, he must take up again the task of denunciation which he abhorred; and
this is the last we hear of him.

It was the same with individuals as with the people as a whole. We may say
that with few exceptions, whomever he touched he singed, whomever he
struck he broke--_a man of quarrel and strife to the whole land, all of
them curse me_. And he cursed them back. When Pashhur put him in the
stocks Jeremiah called him _Magor Missabib_, Terror-all-round, _for lo, I
will make thee a terror to thyself and to all thy friends, they shall fall
by the sword and thou behold it_.(687) Nothing satisfied his contempt for
Jehoiakim, but that dying the king should be buried with the burial of an
ass.(688) Even for Sedekiah, to whom he showed some tenderness, his last
utterance was of a vision of the weak monarch being mocked by his own
women.(689) His irony, keen to the end, proves his detachment from all
around him. His scorn for the bulk of the other prophets is scorching, and
his words for some of them fatal. Of Shemaiah, who wrote of the captives
in Babylon letters of a tenor opposite to his own, he said _he shall not
have a man to dwell among this people_.(690) When the prophet Hananiah
contradicted him, he foretold, after carefully deliberating between his
rival's words and his own, that Hananiah would die, and Hananiah was dead
within a few months.(691) He had no promise for those whom he counselled
to desert to the enemy save of bare life; nor anything better even for the
best of his friends: _Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them
not! Only thy life will I give thee for a prey in all places whither thou
goest._(692)

The following are the full texts from which the foregoing summary has been
drawn and most of which I have reserved for this Lecture.

IV. 10. Then said I, Ah Lord Yahweh, Verily Thou hast deceived
this people and Jerusalem, saying There shall be peace!--whereas
the sword striketh to the life!

O my bowels! My bowels, I writhe! 19
O the walls of my heart!
My heart is in storm upon me,
I cannot keep silence!

I am filled with the rage of the Lord, VI. 11
Worn with holding it in!
Pour it out on the child in the street,
Where the youths draw together.

The following refers to the conspiracy of his fellow-villagers against
him.

The Lord let me know and