"And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, Into the hand of them of whom thou art afraid, Into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Chaldeans. And I will hurl thee and the mother that bare thee into another land, where ye were not born: There shall ye die. And unto the land whereunto their soul longeth to return, Thither they shall not return." Again the sudden change in the person addressed emphasises the scope of the Divine proclamation; the doom of the royal house is not only announced to them, but also to the world at large. The mention of the Queen Mother, Nehushta, reveals what we should in any case have conjectured, that the policy of the young prince was largely determined by his mother. Her importance is also indicated by xiii. 18, usually supposed to be addressed to Jehoiachin and Nehushta:--- "Say unto the king and the queen mother, Leave your thrones and sit in the dust, For your glorious diadems are fallen." The Queen Mother is a characteristic figure of polygamous Eastern dynasties, but we may be helped to understand what Nehushta was to Jehoiachin if we remember the influence of Eleanor of Poitou over Richard I. and John, and the determined struggle which Margaret of Anjou made on behalf of her ill-starred son. The next verse of our prophecy seems to be a protest against the severe sentence pronounced in the preceding clauses:-- "Is then this man Coniah a despised vessel, only fit to be broken? Is he a tool, that no one wants?" Thus Jeremiah imagines the citizens and warriors of Jerusalem crying out against him, for his sentence of doom against their darling prince and captain. The prophetic utterance seemed to them monstrous and incredible, only worthy to be met with impatient scorn. We may find a mediæval analogy to the situation at Jerusalem in the relations of Clement IV. to Conradin, the last heir of the house of Hohenstaufen. When this youth of sixteen was in the full career of victory, the Pope predicted that his army would be scattered like smoke, and pointed out the prince and his allies as victims for the sacrifice. When Conradin was executed after his defeat at Tagliacozzo, Christendom was filled with abhorrence at the suspicion that Clement had countenanced the doing to death of the hereditary enemy of the Papal See. Jehoiachin's friends felt towards Jeremiah somewhat as these thirteenth-century Ghibellines towards Clement. Moreover the charge against Clement was probably unfounded; Milman[99] says of him, "He was doubtless moved with inner remorse at the cruelties of 'his champion' Charles of Anjou." Jeremiah too would lament the doom he was constrained to utter. Nevertheless he could not permit Judah to be deluded to its ruin by empty dreams of glory:--