worked their doom. But this answer is
too full of deuteronomic phrasing for the whole of it to be the Prophet's;
if any of it is genuine this can only be part of the obviously expanded
opening, 21, 22_a_.

The real, the characteristic answers of Jeremiah are the others: to the
women reported in verses 24, 25, and to all the Jews in Egypt 26-28; in
which respectively he treats the claim of the women ironically, and leaves
the issue between his word and that of his opponents to be decided by the
event. These answers also have been expanded, but we may reasonably take
the following to be original.(675) Note how they connect in verse 24 with
verse 19. I again follow the Greek.

XLIV. 24. And Jeremiah said [to the people and] to the women, [25]
Hear the Word of the Lord, Thus saith the Lord, Israel's God:

Ye women(676) have said with your mouths
And fulfilled with your hands,
"We must indeed perform our vows,
Which we have vowed,
"To burn to the Queen of Heaven,
And to pour her libations!"
Indeed then establish your words(677)
And perform your vows!

Jeremiah "adds this by way of irony."(678) Having thus finished with the
women, he adds an Oracle to the Jews in general.

26. Therefore hear the Word of the Lord all Judah, who are settled
in the land of Egypt:

By My great Name I swear,
Sayeth the Lord,
That My Name shall no more be called
By the mouth of a man of Judah--
Saying, "As liveth the Lord!"--
In all the land of Egypt.
Lo, I am wakeful upon you 27
For evil and not for good.(679)
And the remnant of Judah shall know, 28_b_
Whose is the word that shall stand.(680)

These are the last words we have from him, and up to these last he is
still himself--broken-hearted indeed and disappointed in the ultimate
remnant of his people--but still himself in his honesty, his steadfastness
to the truth and his courage; still himself in his irony, his
deliberateness and his confident appeal to the future for the vindication
of his word.

So he disappears from our sight. How pathetic that even after his death he
is not spared from spoiling but that the last clear streams of his
prophesying must run out, as we have seen, in the sands of those
expanders!

Lecture VII.

THE STORY OF HIS SOUL.

In this Lecture I propose to gather up the story of the soul of the