"Chemosh shall go forth into captivity, his priests and his princes together. Every head is bald, and every beard clipped; Upon all the hands are cuttings, and upon the loins sackcloth. On all the housetops and in all the streets of Moab there is everywhere lamentation; For I have broken Moab like a useless vessel--it is the utterance of Jehovah. How is it broken down! Howl ye! Be thou ashamed! How hath Moab turned the back! All the neighbours shall laugh and shudder at Moab. * * * * * The heart of the mighty men of Moab at that day Shall be like the heart of a woman in her pangs." This section of Jeremiah illustrates the dramatic versatility of the prophet's method. He identifies himself now with the blood-thirsty invader, now with his wretched victims, and now with the terror-stricken spectators; and sets forth the emotions of each in turn with vivid realism. Hence at one moment we have the pathos and pity of such verses as we have just quoted, and at another such stern and savage words as these:-- "Cursed be he that doeth the work of Jehovah negligently, Cursed be he that stinteth his sword of blood." These lines might have served as a motto for Cromwell at the massacre of Drogheda, for Tilly's army at the sack of Magdeburg, or for Danton and Robespierre during the Reign of Terror. Jeremiah's words were the more terrible because they were uttered with the full consciousness that in the dread Chaldean king[216] a servant of Jehovah was at hand who would be careful not to incur any curse for stinting his sword of blood. We shrink from what seems to us the prophet's brutal assertion that relentless and indiscriminate slaughter is sometimes the service which man is called upon to render to God. Such sentiment is for the most part worthless and unreal; it does not save us from epidemics of war fever, and is at once ignored under the stress of horrors like the Indian Mutiny. There is no true comfort in trying to persuade ourselves that the most awful events of history lie outside of the Divine purpose, or in forgetting that the human scourges of their kind do the work that God has assigned to them.