21 and XXXVIII. 14-27 relate, "should have taken
place in similar circumstances within so short a time." Yet the king was
just the man to appeal to the Prophet time after time during the siege.
The similarities in the two stories are natural because circumstances were
more or less similar at the various stages of such a siege; but the
differences are more significant. The vivid details of XXXVIII attest it
as the account of an event and of sayings subsequent to those related in
XXXVII. The Prophet's precaution, before he would answer, in getting a
pledge that he would not be put to death nor handed over to the princes,
as he had already been, and his consent for Sedekiah's sake, as well as
for his own, to prevaricate to the princes are features not found in the
other reports of such interviews, but intelligible and natural after the
terrible treatment he had suffered. Dr. Skinner, too, admits that the two
accounts may be read as of different experiences of the Prophet, "if we
can suppose that the offence with which he is charged in XXXVIII. 1 ff.
could have been committed while he was a prisoner in the court of the
guard;" but this appears to Dr. Skinner as "hardly credible." Yet the
incidents related in XXXII. 6-15 show not only that it is credible but
that it actually happened. In the East such imprisonment does not prevent
a prisoner, though shackled, from communicating with his friends and even
with the gaping crowd outside his bars, as I have seen more than once.

In the Court of the Guard Jeremiah remained till the city was taken.(603)
He regained communication with his friends; and it is not surprising to
have as from this time several sayings by him, or to discover from them
that his heart, no longer confined to reiterating the certain doom of the
city, was once more released to the hope of a future for his people, hope
across which the shadow of doubt appears to have fallen but once. His
guard-court prophecies form part of that separate collection, Chs.
XXX-XXXIII, to which the name The Book of Hope has been fitly given. Of
these chapters XXX and XXXI, without date, imply that the city has already
fallen and the exile of her people is complete. But XXXII and XXXIII are
assigned to the last year of the siege and to the Prophet's confinement to
the guard-court. There is now general agreement that XXXII. 1-5 (or at
least 3-5) are from a later hand, which correctly dates the story it
introduces but attributes Jeremia