es not as usual give way to lamentation, but
hurls his maledictions. "O Jehovah! give thou their sons to hunger,
deliver them to the sword; let their wives be made childless and widows;
let their strong men be given over to death, and their young men be
smitten with the sword."

And to consummate, as it were, his threats of divine punishment so soon
to be visited on the degenerate city, Jeremiah is directed to buy an
earthenware bottle, such as was used by the peasants to hold their
drinking-water, and to summon the elders and priests of Jerusalem to the
southwestern corner of the city, and to throw before their feet the
bottle and shiver it in pieces, as a significant symbol of the
approaching fall of the city, to be destroyed as utterly as the
shattered jar. "And I will empty out in the dust, says Jehovah, the
counsels of Judah and Jerusalem, as this water is now poured from the
bottle. And I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies
and by the hands of those that seek their lives; and I will give their
corpses for meat to the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth; and
I will make this city an astonishment and a scoffing. Every one that
passes by it will be astonished and hiss at its misfortunes. Even so
will I shatter this people and this city, as this bottle, which cannot
be made whole again, has been shattered." Nor was Jeremiah contented to
utter these fearful maledictions to the priests and elders; he made his
way to the Temple, and taking his stand among the people, he reiterated,
amid a storm of hisses, mockeries, and threats, what he had just
declared to a smaller audience in reference to Jerusalem.

Such an appalling announcement of calamities, and in such strong and
plain language, must have transported his hearers with fear or with
wrath. He was either the ambassador of Heaven, before whose voice the
people in the time of Elijah would have quaked with unutterable anguish,
or a madman who was no longer to be endured. We have no record of any
prophet or any preacher who ever used language so terrible or so daring.
Even Luther never hurled such maledictions on the church which he called
the "scarlet mother." Jeremiah uttered no vague generalities, but
brought the matter home with awful directness. Among his auditors was
Pashur, the chief governor of the Temple, and a priest by birth. He at
once ordered the Temple police to seize the bold and outspoken prophet,
who was forthwith punished