The elements that make up chs. xiv.-xvii. are very loosely connected. Generally speaking, the situation of the people is desperate. The doom--already inaugurated in the form of a drought-is hastening on; no excuse will be accepted and no intercession can avail. In a bold and striking poem, xv. 10-21, Jeremiah complains of his bitter and lonely fate, and is reassured of the divine support. In view of the impending misery he is forbidden to marry, and more and more he is thrown back upon Jehovah as his absolute and only hope.[1] [Footnote 1: Ch. xvii. 19-27 is almost certainly post-exilic, and probably belongs to Nehemiah's time (about 450). Jeremiah nowhere else emphasizes the Sabbath, and it would be very unlike him to represent the future prosperity of Judah as conditional upon the people's observance of a single law, especially one not distinctively ethical. Such emphasis on the Sabbath suggests the post-exilic church (cf. Neh. xiii.; Is. lviii.).] Chs. xviii.-xx. A chance sight of a potter refashioning a spoiled vessel suggests to Jeremiah the conditional nature of prophecy. But as Judah remains obstinate, the threat must be irretrievably fulfilled. The proclamation of this truth in the temple court led to his imprisonment. On his release he distinctly and deliberately announces the exile to Babylon, and then breaks out into a passionate cry, which rings with an almost unparalleled sincerity, over the misery of his life, especially of that prophetic life to which he had been mysteriously but irresistibly impelled. Ch. xxi. 1-10, one of the latest pieces in the book, contains Jeremiah's answer to the question of Zedekiah relative to the issue of the siege of Jerusalem, which had already begun (588). Then follow two sections, one dealing with kings, xxi. 11-xxiii. 8, the other with prophets, xxiii. 9-40. The former, after an introduction which emphasizes the specific functions of the king, deals successively with Jehoahaz (=Shallum), Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim's oppressive methods being pointedly contrasted with the beneficent regime of his father Josiah; and against the present incompetence of the rulers and misery of the monarchy is thrown up a picture of the true king and the Messianic days, xxiii. 5-8. The latter section, xxiii. 9-40, denounces the prophets for their immorality, their easy optimism and their lack of independence. In ch. xxiv., which falls in Zedekiah's reign, after the first deportation (about 596 B.C.), it is symbolically suggested to Jeremiah that the exiles are much better than those who were allowed to remain in the land, and their ultimate fate would be infinitely happier. The battle of Carchemish in 605 showed that Babylonian supremacy was ultimately inevitable; to this year belongs ch. xxv., in which Jeremiah definitely announces the duration of the exile as seventy years. Many lands beside Judah would be included in the doom, and finally Babylon itself would be punished.