This is, as has been said, a prophecy of Christianity which has hardly its
equal in the Old Testament.(825) It is the Covenant which Jesus Christ the
Son of God accepted for Himself and all men and sealed with His own blood.

And yet not even in this prophecy of Jeremiah, in which the individual
soul is made to feel that God created it not for its family nor its state
nor its church but only for Himself, is there any breath of a promise for
it after death. The Prophet's eyes are still sealed to that future. The
soul must be content that her strength and peace and hope are with God.

Appendix I.

MEDES AND SCYTHIANS (PP. 73, 110).

It is very difficult, if not impossible, to give a correct account of the
national and racial movements which, along with the moral conditions in
Judah, called forth Jeremiah's Oracles of judgment in the years
immediately following his call in 627-626 B.C. But the following facts are
well founded. In or about 625 the Medes were defeated in an attack upon
Assyria and their king Phraortes was killed, but at the same time
Asshurbanipal died, and his weaker successor was compelled to recognize
the virtual independence of Nabopolassar, the Chaldean in Babylon.
Cyaxares (624-585), the son of Phraortes, soon after his succession to his
father--say between 624 and 620--led a second Median assault upon Assyria
and besieged Nineveh, but had to retire because of the onset from the
north of the Scythians, the Ashguzai of the Assyrian monuments, probably
the Ashkenaz or Ashkunza (?) of the Old Testament. And then it was not for
some years that Cyaxares felt himself strong enough by his alliance with
Nabopolassar for a third Median invasion of Assyria which culminated in
the capture and destruction of Nineveh.

The Assyrians appear to have been in touch with the Ashguzai for over a
century and for a shorter time probably in alliance with them; which
alliance was the cause of the Scythian advance to the relief of Nineveh
from its siege by the Medes _circa_ 724-720 (see Winckler _Die
Keilinschriften v. das alte Testament_, 3rd ed., pp. 100 ff.). About the
same time must be dated the Scythian advance through Western Asia to the
borders of Egypt, which Herodotus (I. 103-104, IV. 1) reports. Professor
N. Schmidt (_Enc. Bibl._, art. "Scythians") supposes that this advance was
due to the same Scythian-Assyrian alliance, in order to preserve the
Assyrian territories