is origin from the _viculus
Anathoth_. It would be unnatural if it were otherwise. The style of
Jeremiah stands on the same ground as the hairy garment and leather
girdle of Elijah. He who is sorrowful and afflicted in his heart, whose
eyes fail with tears (Lament. ii. 11), cannot adorn and decorate
himself in his dress or speech.

From chap. xi. 21, xii. 5, 6, several interpreters have inferred, that
the Prophet first came forward in his native place Anathoth, and that,
because they there said to him: "Thou shalt not prophecy in the name of
the Lord, else thou shalt die by our hand," he then went to Jerusalem.
But those passages rather refer to an experience which the Prophet made
at an incidental visit in his native place, quite similar to what our
Saviour experienced at Nazareth, according to Luke iv. 24. For in chap.
xxv. 3, Jeremiah says to "all the inhabitants of Jerusalem," that he
had spoken to _them_ since the thirteenth year of Josiah. As early as
in chap. ii. 2, at the beginning of a discourse which bears a general
introductory character, and which immediately follows, and is connected
with his vocation in chap. i., he receives the command: "Go, and cry
into the ears of Jerusalem." The opening speech itself cannot,
according to its contents, have been spoken in some corner of the
country, but in the metropolis only, in the temple more specially, the
centre of the nation and its spiritual dwelling place. It was there
that that must be delivered which was to be told to the whole people as
such.

[Pg 373]

THE SECTION, CHAP. III, 14-17.

The whole Section, from chap. iii. 6, to the end of chap. vi., forms
one connected discourse, separated from the preceding context by the
inscription in chap. iii. 6, and from the subsequent context, by the
inscription in chap. vii. 1. This separation, however, is more external
than internal. The contents and tone remain the same through the whole
series of chapters which open the collection of the prophecies of
Jeremiah, and that to such a degree, that we are compelled to doubt the
correctness of the proceeding of those interpreters, who would
determine the chronological order of the single portions, and fix the
exact period in the reign of Josiah to which every single portion
belongs. If such a proceeding were admissible, why should the Prophet
have expressed himself, in the inscription of the Section before us, in
terms so general as: "And t