e to thee these.

If these Qinah quatrains are not Jeremiah's, some one else could match him
to the letter and the very breath. They would fall fitly from his lips
immediately upon the fulfilment of his people's doom. Less probably his
are the verses which follow and abruptly add to his stern rehearsal of
judgment on Judah the promise of her deliverance, even introducing this
with a _therefore_ as if deliverance were the certain corollary of
judgment--a conclusion not to be grudged by us to the faith of a later
believer; for it is not untrue that the sinner's extremest need is the
occasion for God's salvation.(622) Yet the sudden transition feels
artificial, and lacks, be it observed, what we should expect from Jeremiah
himself, a call to the doomed people to repent. Note, too, the breakdown
of the metre under a certain redundancy, which is not characteristic of
Jeremiah.

[Therefore thy devourers shall all be devoured, 16
And all thine oppressors.
All shall go off to captivity;
Thy spoilers for spoil shall be
And all that upon thee do prey, I give for prey.
For new flesh I shall bring up upon thee, 17
From thy wounds I shall heal thee;(623)
Outcast they called thee, O Sion,
Whom none seeketh after.]

The rest of the chapter is even less capable of being assigned to
Jeremiah.

More of Jeremiah's own Oracles are readily recognised in Ch. XXXI. I leave
to a later lecture the question of the authenticity of that on The New
Covenant and of the immediately preceding verses;(624) while the verses
which close the chapter are certainly not the Prophet's. But I take now
the rest of the chapter, verses 1-28. The first of these may be editorial,
the link by which the compiler has connected Chs. XXX and XXXI; yet there
is nothing to prevent us from hearing in it Jeremiah himself.

XXXI. 1. At that time--Rede of the Lord--I shall be God to all the
families(625) of Israel, and they shall be a people to Me.

A poem follows which metrically and in substance bears every mark of being
Jeremiah's. The measure is his favourite Qinah, and the memory of the
Lord's ancient love for Israel, which had stirred the youth of the
Prophet,(626) revives in his old age and is the motive of his assurance
that Israel will be restored. It is of Ephraim as well as of Judah that he
thinks, indeed of Ephraim especially. We have seen how the heart of this
son of Anathoth-in-Benjamin was