st, even into the hand of
Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and into the hand of the
Chaldeans; [26] and I will hurl thee out, and thy mother who bare
thee, upon another land, where ye were not born, and there shall
ye die. 27. And to the land, towards which they shall be lifting
their soul,(456) they shall not return.

Is Konyahu then despised, 28
Like a nauseous vessel?
Why is he flung and cast out
On a land he knows not?
Land, Land, Land, 29
Hear the Word of the Lord!
Write this man down as childless, 30
A fellow ...(?)
For none of his seed shall flourish
Seated on David's throne,
Or ruling still in Judah.(457)

We can reasonably deny to Jeremiah nothing of all this passage, not even
the prose by which the metre is interrupted. We have seen how natural it
was for the rhapsodists of his race to pass from verse to prose and again
from prose to verse. Nor are the repetitions superfluous, not even that
four-fold _into the hand of_ in the prose section, for at each recurrence
of the phrase we feel the grip of their captor closing more fast upon the
doomed king and people. Nor are we required to take the pathetic words,
_the land to which they shall be lifting up their soul_, as true only of
those who have been long banished. For the exiles to Babylon felt this
home-sickness from the very first, as Jeremiah well knew.

* * * * *

If we are to trust the date given by its title--and no sufficient reason
exists against our doing so--there is still an Oracle of Jeremiah, which,
though now standing far down in our Book, Ch. XLV, belongs to the reign of
Jehoiakim, and is properly a supplement to the story of the writing of the
Rolls by Baruch in 605.(458) The text has suffered, probably more than we
can now detect.

XLV. 1. The Word, which Jeremiah the prophet spake to Baruch, the
son of Neriah, while he was writing these words in a book at the
mouth of Jeremiah,(459) in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, son of
Josiah, king of Judah.(460) 2. Thus saith the Lord(461) concerning
thee, O Baruch, [3] for thou didst say:--

Woe is me! Woe is me!(462)
How hath the Lord on my pain heaped sorrow!
I am worn with my groaning,
Rest I find none!
[Thus shalt thou say to him(463)] thus sayeth the Lord: 4
Lo, what I built I have to destroy,
And what I planted I have