A very striking contrast to all this dream of victory and blessedness is presented by lxiii. 7-lxiv. 12, in which the people sorrowfully remind themselves of the brilliant far-off days of the Exodus when the Spirit was with them--the Spirit whom sin has now driven away--and passionately pray that Jehovah, in His fatherly pity, would mightily interpose to save them.[1] The devotees of superstitious cults are threatened with destruction, lxv. 1-7, while brilliant promises are held out to the faithful--long and happy life in a world transformed, lxv. 8-25. Again destruction is predicted for those who, while practising superstitious rites, are yet eager to build a temple to Jehovah to rival the existing one in Jerusalem; while the faithful are comforted with the prospect of victory, increase of population and resources, and the perpetuity of their race (lxvi.). [Footnote 1: Professor G. A. Smith refers this prayer to the period of disillusion after the return and before the new religious impulse given by Haggai and Zechariah--about 525 B.C. ] JEREMIAH The interest of the book of Jeremiah is unique. On the one hand, it is our most reliable and elaborate source for the long period of history which it covers; on the other, it presents us with prophecy in its most intensely human phase, manifesting itself through a strangely attractive personality that was subject to like doubts and passions with ourselves. At his call, in 626 B.C., he was young and inexperienced, i. 6, so that he cannot have been born earlier than 650. The political and religious atmosphere of his ministry was alike depressing. When it began, the Scythians were overrunning Western Asia, and Judah was the vassal of Assyria, as she continued to be till the fall of Nineveh in 606 B.C. Josiah, in whose reign Jeremiah began his ministry, was a good king; but the idolatries of his grandfather Manasseh had only too surely left their mark, and the reformation which was inaugurated on the basis of Deuteronomy (621) had produced little permanent result. Idolatry and immorality of all kinds continued to be the order of the day, vii. 9 (about 608). The inner corruption found its counterpart in political disaster. The death of Josiah in 609 at Megiddo, when he took the field, probably as the vassal of Assyria, against the king of Egypt, was a staggering blow to the hopes of the reformers, and formed a powerful argument in the hands of the sceptics. The vassalage of Assyria was exchanged for the vassalage of Egypt, and that, in four years, for the vassalage of Babylonia, whose supremacy over Western Asia was assured by her victory on the epoch-making field of Carchemish (605).