In connection with this external history, we have a vivid portraiture of his inward conflicts. Most deeply does he sympathize with his countrymen in the calamities which their sins have brought upon them; yet he is rewarded only with curses, because he faithfully forewarns them of the judgments of heaven which are fast approaching, and which can be averted only by hearty repentance and reformation. "Woe is me, my mother," he cries out in his anguish, "that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me" (15:10); and like Job he loses all composure under the pressure of his sorrows, and bitterly curses the day of his birth (20:14-18). Again we see him in the hands of his persecutors serenely committing himself to God, and calmly warning them against the guilt of shedding his blood (26:12-15). In such alternations of impatience and faith we have a true portraiture of the struggle of grace against the weakness of nature; and it is this which gives it especial value as a part of revelation, which never exhibits good men in a fictitious light, but always in the sober livery of truth. 11. Jeremiah was of priestly descent (1:1); but that Hilkiah, his father, was identical with the high priest who found in the temple the book of the law (2 Kings 22:8), rests upon mere conjecture. Anathoth, his native place, was in the land of Benjamin, about four miles north of Jerusalem. He was called to the prophetical office in his youth, and exercised it in his native land from the thirteenth year of Josiah to the close of Zedekiah's reign, through a period of about forty-one years (chap. 1:3); and afterwards in Egypt, whither he was carried by the rebellious remnant of the people (chaps. 43, 44). His first appearance, therefore, was about one hundred and thirty-one years after that of Isaiah, if we reckon from the last year of Uzziah, and some seventy or more after the close of Isaiah's prophecies. During all this time the religious and moral condition of the Jewish nation had been steadily changing for the worse under such kings as Manasseh and Amon; nor could the zealous efforts of Josiah avail to check the swelling tide of idolatry and profligacy. Sent by Jehovah in such a degenerate age to rebuke the wicked rulers and people for their sins, and to forewarn them of God's impending judgments, he was necessarily subjected to much persecution. Isaiah had administered stern rebukes to Ahaz and his people, but he had encouraged them with the hope of successful resistance to the Assyrian power. But from the Chaldeans, who had succeeded the Assyrians as the ruling monarchy of the world, Jeremiah could promise no deliverance. In the name of the Lord he counselled submission, solemnly assuring the kings and princes of Judah that their reliance on Egyptian help would end in shame and disappointment (37:5-10).