18. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will sling out them that dwell in this land,(410) and will distress them in order that they may find ...(?) Such is the most to be made of the fragment of which there are many interpretations. The next piece, 19-22, is generally acknowledged to be Jeremiah’s. It has the ring of his earlier Oracles. The Hebrew and Greek texts differ as to the speaker in 19_a_. Probably the Greek is correct—the Prophet or the Deity addresses the city or nation and the Prophet replies for the latter identifying himself with her sufferings. It is possible, however, that the words _But I said_ are misplaced and should begin the verse, in which case the Hebrew _my_ is to be preferred to the Greek _thy_ adopted below. If so the stoicism of 19 is remarkable. Woe is me for thy(411) ruin, 19 Sore is thy(412) stroke! But I said, Well, this sickness is mine(413) And I must bear it! Undone is my tent and perished,(414) 20 Snapped all my cords! My sons—they went out from me And they are not! None now to stretch me my tent Or hang up my curtains. For that the shepherds(415) are brutish 21 Nor seek of the Lord, Therefore prosper they shall not, All scattered their flock.(416) Hark the bruit, X. 22 Behold it comes, And uproar great From land of the North, To lay the cities of Judah waste, A lair of jackals. As we have seen, Jeremiah in the excitement of alarm falls on short lines, ejaculations of two stresses each, sometimes as here with one longer line.(417) A quatrain follows of longer, equal lines as is usual with Jeremiah when expressing spiritual truths:— Lord I know! Not to man is his way, 23 Not man’s to walk or settle his steps. Chasten me, Lord, but with judgment, 24 Not in wrath, lest Thou bring me to little! The last verse of the chapter is of a temper unlike that of Jeremiah elsewhere towards other nations, and so like the temper against them felt by later generations in Israel, that most probably it is not his. [Pour out Thy rage on the nations, 25 Who do not own Thee, And out on the kingdoms Who call not Thy Name! For Jacob they devoured and consumed, And wasted his homestead](418) Another series of Oracles, as reasonably referred to the reign of Jehoiakim as to any other stage of Jeremiah’s career, is scattered over Chs. XI-XX. I reserve to a later lecture upon his spiritual conflict and growth those which disclose his debates with his God, his people and himself—XI. 18-XII. 6, XV. 10-XVI. 9, XVII. 14-18, XVIII. 18-23, XX. 7-18, and I take now only such as deal with the character and the doom of the nation.