I looked to the earth, and lo chaos, 23 To the heavens, their light was gone. I looked to the hills and(214) they quivered, 24 All the heights were a-shuddering. I looked—and behold not a man! 25 All the birds of heaven were fled. I looked to the gardens, lo desert, 26 All the townships destroyed, Before the face of the Lord, The glow of His wrath. [For thus hath the Lord said, 27 All the land shall be waste Yet full end I make not](215) For this let the Earth lament, 28 And black be Heaven above! I have spoken and will not relent, Purposed and turn not from it.(216) 4. The Fourth Scythian Song follows immediately, also without introduction. The first four couplets vividly describe the flight of the peasantry, actual or imagined, before the invaders. The rest seems addressed to the City as though being threatened she sought to reduce her foes with a woman’s wiles, only to find that it was not her love but her life they were after, and so expired at their hands in despair. All this is more suitable to the Chaldean than to the Scythian invasion, and may be one of the Prophet’s additions in 604 to his earlier Oracles. However we take it, the figure is of Jeremiah’s boldest and most vivid. The irony is keen. From the noise of the horse and the bowmen, IV. 29 All the land(217) is in flight, They are into the caves, huddle in thickets,(218) Are up on the crags. Every town of its folk is forsaken No habitant in it. All is up! Thou destined to ruin(?)(219) 30 What doest thou now? That thou dressest in scarlet, And deck’st thee in deckings of gold, With stibium widenest thine eyes. In vain dost thou prink! Though satyrs they utterly loathe thee, Thy life are they after! For voice as of travail I hear, 31 Anguish as hers that beareth, The voice of the daughter of Ṣion agasp, he spreadeth her hands: “Woe unto me, but it faints, My life to the butchers!”