First there is the Divine Peradventure at the beginning of the story.(329) _It may be_, God says, that the people will hear and turn from their evil ways that I may forgive their iniquity—a very significant _perhaps_ when taken with the Parable of the Potter to which we are coming. Again, the king at least understands the evil predicted by Jeremiah to be the destruction of his land and people by the King of Babylon.(330) And again, though some of the princes encourage the Prophet’s escape, and urge the king not to burn the Roll, none are shocked by the burning.(331) Evidently in 605-4 they were not so impressed with the divinity of Jeremiah’s word as they had been in 608. Then they did not speak of telling the king; now they say that they _must tell_(332) him. Jehoiakim’s malignant influence has grown, and Jeremiah discovers the inconstancy of the princes, even of some friendly to himself. To the same decisive year, 605-4, _the fourth of Jehoiakim_, is referred an address by Jeremiah reported in XXV. 1-11 (with perhaps 13_a_). This repeats the Prophet’s charge that his people have refused—now for three-and-twenty years—to listen to his call for repentance and reaffirms the certainty, at last made clear by the Battle of Carchemish, that their deserved doom lies in the hands of a Northern Power, which shall waste their land and carry them into foreign servitude for seventy years. The suggestion that this address formed the conclusion of the Second Roll dictated by Jeremiah to Baruch is suitable to the contents of the address and becomes more probable if we take as genuine the words in 13_a_, _Thus will I bring upon that land all My words which I have spoken against her, all that is written in this Book_. But a curious question rises from the fact that we have two differing reports of the address.(333) Very significantly the shorter Greek Version contains neither the addition to the date, _that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon_, nor the two statements that his was the Northern Power which would waste Judah and which she should serve for seventy years (verses 1, 9, 11, as also the similar reference in verse 12), all of which are inserted in the Hebrew text but not without a sign of their being later intrusions upon it.(334) And indeed it is inconceivable that the Greek translator could have omitted the four references to Nebuchadrezzar (including that in verse 12) had he found them in the Hebrew text from which he worked. Probably, therefore, Jeremiah did not include them in the first version of his address; and for this he had reason. His purpose in the address was to declare the fulfilment of the substance of all his previous prophesying, and this had been not that the Chaldeans, but that _a northern power_, would prove to be the executioner of God’s judgment upon Judah. The references to Nebuchadrezzar were added, possibly by Jeremiah himself or by Baruch, as the Chaldean doom steadily drew nearer. The interesting