ht and knowledge of Me,
That I am the Lord, who work troth,
Judgment and justice on earth,
For in these I delight.

25. Behold, the days are coming--Rede of the Lord--that I shall
visit on everyone circumcised as to the foreskin. 26. Egypt and
Judah and Edom, the sons of Ammon and Moab, and all with the
corner(408) clipt, who dwell in the desert; for all the nations
are uncircumcised in their heart and all the house of Israel.

Which just means that Israel, circumcised in the flesh but not in the
spirit, are as bad as the heathen who share with them bodily circumcision.

Ch. X. 1-16 is a spirited, ironic poem on the follies of idolatry which
bears both in style and substance marks of the later exile.

On the other hand X. 17-23 is a small collection of short Oracles in
metre, which there is no reason to deny to Jeremiah. The text of the
first, verses 17-18, is uncertain. If with the help of the Greek we render
it as follows it implies not an actual, but an inevitable and possibly
imminent, siege of Jerusalem. The couplet in 17 may alone be original and
18, the text of which is reducible neither to metre nor wholly to sense, a
prose note upon it.

Sweep in thy wares from beyond,(409) X. 17
In siege that shalt sit!

18. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will sling out them that
dwell in this land,(410) and will distress them in order that they
may find ...(?)

Such is the most to be made of the fragment of which there are many
interpretations. The next piece, 19-22, is generally acknowledged to be
Jeremiah's. It has the ring of his earlier Oracles. The Hebrew and Greek
texts differ as to the speaker in 19_a_. Probably the Greek is correct--the
Prophet or the Deity addresses the city or nation and the Prophet replies
for the latter identifying himself with her sufferings. It is possible,
however, that the words _But I said_ are misplaced and should begin the
verse, in which case the Hebrew _my_ is to be preferred to the Greek _thy_
adopted below. If so the stoicism of 19 is remarkable.

Woe is me for thy(411) ruin, 19
Sore is thy(412) stroke!
But I said,
Well, this sickness is mine(413)
And I must bear it!
Undone is my tent and perished,(414) 20
Snapped all my cords!
My sons--they went out from me
And they are not!
None now to stretch me my tent
Or hang up my curtains.
For that the she