14. Therefore thus hath the Lord of Hosts said, because of their speaking this word—(228) Behold I am setting My Word In thy mouth for fire, And this people for wood, And it shall devour them. 5. The Fifth Song upon the Scythians, Ch. V. 15-17, besides still leaving them nameless, emphasises their strangeness to Israel’s world. There was a common language in Western Asia, Aramean, the _lingua franca_ of traders from Nineveh to Memphis; and Jew, Assyrian and Egyptian conversed in it. But the tongue of these raiders from over the Caucasus was unintelligible. Yet how they would set their teeth into the land! Mixed with the verses which thus describe them are others which suit not them but the Chaldeans and must have been added by the Prophet in 604. A people so new to the Jews might hardly have been called by Jeremiah _an ancient nation, from of old a nation_, and in fact these phrases are wanting in the Greek version. Behold, I am bringing upon you V. 15 A nation from far, [O house of Israel, Rede of the Lord An ancient nation it is, From of old a nation.](229) A nation thou knowest not its tongue, 16 Nor canst hear what it says, Its quiver an open grave,(230) All of it stalwarts.(231) It shall eat up thy harvest and bread, 17 Eat thy sons and thy daughters, It shall eat up thy flocks and thy cattle, Eat thy vines and thy figs. It shall beat down thy fortified towns, Wherein thou dost trust, with the sword. The last couplet is unsuitable to the Scythians, incapable as they were of sieges and avoiding fortified towns—though once they rushed Askalon. It is probably, therefore, another of the additions of 604 referring to the Chaldeans. The prose which follows is certainly from the Chaldean period, for it was not Scythians but Chaldeans who threatened with exile the peoples whom they overran. V. 18. Yet even in those days—Rede of the Lord—I will not make a full end of you. 19. And it shall be when they say, For what hath the Lord our God done to us all these things?—that thou shalt say to them, Just as ye have left Me and have served foreign gods in your own land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land not yours.