Or take Ch. II. 5-8. A stanza of four lines in irregular Qinah measure
(verse 5) is followed by a couplet of four-two stresses and several lines
of three each (verses 6 and 7), and then (verse 8) by a couplet of
three-two, another of four-three, and another of three-three.(66) In Chs.
IX and X also we shall find irregular metres.

Let us now take a passage, IX. 22, 23, which, except for its last couplet,
is of another measure than the Qinah. The lines have three accents each,
like those of the Book of Job:--

Boast not the wise in his wisdom,
Boast not the strong in his strength,
Boast not the rich in his riches,
But in this let him boast who would boast--
Instinct and knowledge of Me,
Me, the Lord, Who work troth
And(67) justice and right upon earth,
For in these I delight.

Or this couplet, X. 23, in lines of four stresses each:--

Lord, I know--not to man is his way,
Not a man's to walk or settle his steps!

Not being in the Qinah measure, both these passages are denied to Jeremiah
by Duhm. Is not this arbitrary?

The sections of the Book which pass from verse to prose and from prose to
verse are frequent.

One of the most striking is the narrative of the Prophet's call, Ch. I.
4-19, which I leave to be rendered in the next lecture. In Chap. VII. 28
ff. we have, to begin with, two verses:--

This is the folk that obeyed not
The voice of the Lord,(68)
That would not accept correction;
Lost(69) is truth from their mouth.
Shear and scatter thy locks,
Raise a dirge on the heights,
The Lord hath refused and forsaken
The sons of His wrath.

Then these verses are followed by a prose tale of the people's sins. Is
this necessarily from a later hand, as Duhm maintains, and not naturally
from Jeremiah himself?

Again Chs. VIII and IX are a medley of lyrics and prose passages. While
some of the prose is certainly not Jeremiah's, being irrelevant to the
lyrics and showing the colour of a later age, the rest may well be from
himself.

Ch. XIV is also a medley of verse and prose. After the Dirge on the
Drought (which we take later), comes a passage in rhythmical prose (verses
11-16), broken only by the metrical utterance of the false prophets in
verse 13:--

Sword or famine ye shall not see,
They shall not be yours;
But peace and staith shall I give you
Within this Place.(70)

And verse come