and the famine and the pestilence; and what Thou hast spoken is
come to pass, and, lo, Thou art seeing it. 25. Yet Thou saidst to
me, Buy thee the field for money, so I wrote the deed and sealed
it and took witnesses--whereas the city is to be given into the
hands of the Chaldeans!

The tone of the expostulating Jeremiah is here unmistakable; and (as I
have said) a Divine answer to his expostulations must have been given him,
though now perhaps irrecoverable from among the expansions which it has
undergone, verses 26-44. Two things are of interest: the practical
carefulness of this great idealist, and the fact that the material basis
of his hope for his country's freedom and prosperity was his own right to
a bit of property in land. Let those observe, who deny to such individual
rights any communal interest or advantage. Jeremiah at least proves how a
small property of his own may help a prophet in his hope for his country
and people.

All this is followed in Ch. XXXIII by a series of oracles under the
heading _The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time while he was
still shut up in the guard-court_. Because verses 14-26 are lacking in the
Greek and could not have been omitted by the translator had they been in
the original text, and because they are composed partly of mere echoes of
Jeremiah and partly of promises for the Monarchy and Priesthood not
consonant with his views of the institutions of Israel, they are very
generally rejected. So are 2 and 3 because of their doubtful relevance and
their style, that of the great prophet of the end of the Exile. The
originality of 1 and 4-13 has also been denied. The question is difficult.
But there is no reason to doubt that the editor had good material for the
data in 1, or that under the Hebrew text, which as it stands in 4, 5 is
impossible(606) and throughout 6-13 has been much expanded, there is
something of Jeremiah's own. Verses 4 and 5 reflect the siege in progress,
though if the date in verse 1 be correct we must take _torn down_ as
future. In 6-13 are promises of the restoration of the ruined city, of
peace and stability, of the return of the exiles both of Judah and Israel
and of their forgiveness; Jerusalem shall again be a joy, and the voices
of joy, of the bridegroom and bride, and of worship in the Temple, shall
again be heard; shepherds and their flocks shall be restored throughout
Judah and the Negeb. It would be daring to deny t