ey eagerly asked him for a Word of the
Lord, promising to obey it, in the expectation of their kind that it would
be according to their own ignorant wishes; but when it declared against
these, they scolded Jeremiah as disappointed barbarians do their idols,
and presuming on his age as a weakness, complained that he had been set
against them by Baruch, a philo-Chaldean who would have them all carried
off to Babylon! So Baruch also--all praise to him--held the same sane views
of the situation as his Prophet and as that wise governor Gedaliah. In
spite of their promise they refused to obey the Word of the Lord, fled for
Egypt carrying with them Jeremiah and Baruch, and reached the frontier
town of Tahpanhes. How it must have broken the Prophet's heart!(667)

But not his honesty or his courage! At Tahpanhes he set before the
fugitives one of those symbols which had been characteristic of his
prophesying. He laid great stones in the entry of the house of the Pharaoh
and declared that Nebuchadrezzar would plant his throne and spread his
tapestries upon them, when he came to smite Egypt, assuming that land as
easily as a shepherd dons his garment; and after breaking the obelisks of
its gods and burning their temples he would safely depart from it.(668)

So far the narrative runs clearly, but in Ch. XLIV, the last that is
written of Jeremiah, the expander has been specially busy.(669) The
chapter opens, verses 1-14, with what purports to be an Oracle by Jeremiah
concerning, not the little band which had brought him down with them, but
_all the Jews which were dwelling in the land of Egypt, at Migdol and
Tahpanhes_,(670) on the northern frontier, _and in the land of Pathros_,
or Upper Egypt. It is not said that these came to Tahpanhes to receive the
Oracle. Yet the arrival of a company fresh from Judah and her recent awful
experiences must have stirred the Jewish communities already in Egypt and
drawn at least representatives of them to Tahpanhes to see and to hear the
newcomers. If so, it would be natural for Jeremiah to expound the
happenings in Judah, and the Divine reasons for them. No date is given for
the Prophet's Oracle. This need not have been uttered for some time after
he reached Egypt, when he was able to acquaint himself with the conditions
and character of his countrymen in their pagan environment, and learn in
particular how they had fallen away like their fathers to the worship of
other gods. Such indeed is the do