prophet:--

And thou shalt say unto this people,
"Every jar shall be filled with wine,"

and it shall be if they say unto thee, "Don't we know of
course(75) that

"Every jar shall be filled with wine,"

then thou shalt say unto them: Thus saith the Lord, Lo, I am about
to fill the inhabitants of this land, the kings and princes, the
priests and prophets, even Judah and all the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, with drunkenness [the drunkenness, that is, of horror
at impending judgments] and I will dash them one against another,
fathers and sons together. I will not pity, saith the Lord, nor
spare nor have compassion that I should not destroy them.

How one catches the irritation of the crowd on being told what seems to
them such a commonplace--till it is interpreted!

Like his fellow-prophets, whose moral atmosphere was as burning as their
physical summer, who living on the edge of the desert under a downright
sun _drew breath_ (as Isaiah puts it) _in the fear of the Lord_ and saw
the world in the blaze of His justice, Jeremiah brings home to the hearts
of his people the truths and judgments, with which he was charged, in the
hard, hot realism of their austere world. Through his verse we see the
barer landscapes of Benjamin and Judah without shadow or other relief,
every ugly detail exposed by the ruthless noon, and beyond them the desert
hills shimmering through the heat. Drought, famine, pestilence and
especially war sweep over the land and the ghastly prostrate things, human
as well as animal, which their skirts leave behind are rendered with
vividness, poignancy and horror of detail.

Take, to begin with, the following, XIV. 1 ff.:--

_The Word of the Lord to Jeremiah Concerning the Drought._

Jerusalem's cry is gone up,
Judah is mourning,
The gates thereof faint in
Black grief to the ground.

Her nobles sent their menials for water,
They came to the pits;
Water found none and returned,
Empty their vessels.
[Abashed and confounded
They cover their heads.](76)

The tillers(77) of the ground are dismayed,
For no rain hath been(78);
And abashed are the ploughmen,
They cover their heads.

The hind on the moor calves and abandons,
For the grass has not come.
On the bare heights stand the wild asses,
Gasping for air
With glazen eyes--
Herb there is none!

Though o