605 The custom was to have one copy open for reference, and one sealed for confirmation if the open one should be disputed. To _sealed_ Hebrew adds _the injunction and conditions_. 606 The numerous emendations are purely conjectural; the least unsatisfactory being Cornill’s: _The houses ... shall be torn down against which the Chaldeans are coming to fight with mounds and sword and to fill with the corpses of men whom I have smitten in my wrath_, etc. 607 One may eliminate the few words not found in Greek, and naturally suspect the liturgical clause in 11. Some take 13 as a late expansion of 12. 608 xxxviii. 28. 609 Verse 14 follows directly on verse 3. The statement that Nebuṣaradan was one of them is in verse 13 which belongs to the very late section, 4-13, lacking in the Greek. 610 Hebrew: lit. _to the house_; Greek omits. 611 Either Neby Samwîl or Tell-en-Naṣb, both a few miles north of Jerusalem. The above exposition takes xxxix. 3, 14 and xl. 1-6 as supplementary. But some read them as variants of the same episode, debating which is the more reliable. For a full discussion see Skinner, pp. 272 ff. 612 Hebrew, _the forces_ (Greek, _the force_) _in the field_. 613 The oscillations of this controversy have been recently so fully recounted (by Cornill and Peake) that it is unnecessary to repeat them here. 614 Whether the datum xxx. 2, that Jeremiah was commanded by the Lord to write the words spoken to him in a book, is historical, is uncertain. It is not impossible that as he had been moved to write down his Oracles of doom (xxxvi) he should now be similarly advised about these later Oracles of hope. The rejection of xxx. 2, by most critics, seems to me rash. 615 This in answer to Rothstein (Kautzsch’s “Heilige Schrift des A. T.,” 754), whose upper date for them _after_ 597 is too early, and to Gillies (p. 238) who refers them to the Prophet’s imprisonment. 616 Hebrew adds the gloss _like a bearing woman_. 617 So Greek, reading היו for הוי. 618 So Greek, Hebrew _thy_. 619 So Greek, Hebrew _thy_. 620 So Greek, Hebrew _thy_. 621 After the Greek. 622 Driver. 623 Hebrew adds _Rede of the Lord_. 624 Lecture viii. 625 Greek, _family_. 626 iii. 6 f. 627 See p. 72. 628 Cornill dates the poem, “surely,” from the earliest stage of Jeremiah’s prophetic career; but both its late place in the Book and the reasons given above argue strongly for a date at Miṣpah under Gedaliah. 629 So Greek. 630 Or _continue troth to thee_. 631 So Greek; Hebrew _deck thee with_. 632 So Greek. 633 Lit _make common_, i.e. not be obliged to wait over the first four crops as required by the law, Lev. xix. 23-25, before having the fruit released for their own use. Greek reads the similar Hebrew verb _praise_.