Jeremiah Being The Baird Lecture for 1922 By George Adam Smith New York George H. Doran Company 1924 CONTENTS Dedication. Preface. Preliminary. Lecture I. The Man And The Book. Lecture II. The Poet. Lecture III. The Prophet—His Youth And His Call. Lecture IV. The Prophet In The Reign Of Josiah. 1. His Earliest Oracles. (II. 2-IV. 4.) 2. Oracles on the Scythians. (With some others: IV. 5-VI. 29.) 3. Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. (Chs. VII, VIII. 8, XI.) Lecture V. Under Jehoiakim. 1. From Megiddo to Carchemish, 608-605. 2. Parables. (XIII, XVIII-XX, XXXV.) 3. Oracles on the Edge of Doom. (VII. 16-XVIII _passim_, XXII, XLV.) Lecture VI. To The End And After. 1. The Release of Hope. (XXIV, XXIX.) 2. Prophets and Prophets. (XXIII. 9-32, XXVII-XXIX, etc.) 3. The Siege. (XXI, XXXII-XXXIV, XXXVII, XXXVIII.) 4. And After. (XXX, XXXI, XXXIX-XLIV.) Lecture VII. The Story Of His Soul. 1. Protest and Agony. (I, IV. 10, 19, VI. 11, XI. 18-XII. 6, XV. 10-XVI. 9, XVII. 14-18, XVIII. 18-23, XX. 7-18.) 2. Predestination. (I, XVIII, etc.) 3. Sacrifice. Lecture VIII. God, Man And The New Covenant. 1. God. 2. Man and the New Covenant. Appendix I. Medes And Scythians. Appendix II. Necoh’s Campaign. Index Of Texts. Index Of Names And Subjects. Footnotes DEDICATION. TO THE UNION OF THE SCOTTISH CHURCHES PREFACE. The purpose and the scope of this volume are set forth in the beginning of Lecture I. Lecture II. explains the various metrical forms in which I understand Jeremiah to have delivered the most of his prophecies, and which I have endeavoured, however imperfectly, to reproduce in English. Here it is necessary only to emphasise the variety of these forms, the irregularities which are found in them, and the occasional passage of the Prophet from verse to prose and from prose to verse, after the manner of some other bards or rhapsodists of his race. The reader will keep in mind that what appear as metrical irregularities on the printed page would not be felt to be so when sung or chanted; just as is the case with the folk-songs of Palestine to-day. I am well aware that metres so primitive and by our canons so irregular have been more rhythmically rendered by the stately prose of our English Versions; yet it is our duty reverently to seek for the original forms and melodies of what we believe to be the Oracles of God. The only other point connected with the metrical translations offered, which need be mentioned here, is that I have rendered the name of the God of Israel as it is by the Greek and our own Versions—The Lord—which is more suitable to English verse than is either Yahweh or Jehovah.