nd Pashhur Malchiah's son,(587) heard the
words Jeremiah was speaking about the people:(588) [2] "Thus saith
the Lord, He that abides in this city shall die by the sword, the
famine or the pestilence, but he that goes forth to the Chaldeans
shall live--his life shall be to him for a prey but he shall
live."(589) 3. "Thus(590) saith the Lord: This city shall surely
be given into the hand of the king of Babylon's host and they
shall take it."

Verse 2 is rejected by Duhm and Cornill partly on the insufficient ground
that verses 2 and 3 have separate introductions and therefore could have
had originally no connection. But in quoting two utterances of the Prophet
for their cumulative effect it was natural to prefix to each his usual
formula. Duhm's and Cornill's real motive, however, is their repugnance to
admitting that Jeremiah could have advised desertion from the city. So
Duhm equally rejects XXI. 9, of which XXXVIII. 2 is but an abbreviation;
while Cornill seeks to save XXI. 9 by reading it as a summons to the
_whole_ people to surrender and so distinguishes it from XXXVIII. 2,
advice _to individuals_ to desert. I fail to follow this distinction. The
terms used are as individual in the one verse as in the other; if the one
goes the other must also. But need either go? Duhm's view is that both are
from a later period, when there was no longer a native government in
Judah, reverence for the monarchy was dead, and the common conscience of
Jewry was not civic but ecclesiastical! This is ingenious, but far from
convincing. There are no grounds either for denying these verses to
Jeremiah, or for reading his advice _to go forth to the Chaldeans_ as
meant otherwise than for the individual citizens.

Was such advice right or wrong? The question is much debated. The two
German scholars just quoted find it so wrong that they cannot think of it
as Jeremiah's. But in that situation and under the convictions which held
him, the Prophet could not have spoken differently. He knew, and soundly
knew, not only that the city was doomed and that her rulers who persisted
in defending her were senseless, if gallant, fanatics, but also that they
had forfeited their technical legitimacy. To talk to-day of duty, civil or
military, to such a perjured Government does not even deserve to be called
constitutional pedantry, for it has not a splinter of constitutionalism to
support it. Sedekiah held his vassal throne onl