In Ch. XVIII the Parable of the Potter is followed by a metrical Oracle which has all the marks of Jeremiah’s style and repeats the finality of the doom, to which the nation’s forgetfulness of God and idolatry have brought it. Once more the poet contrasts the constancy of nature with his people’s inconstancy. Neither the metre nor the sense of the text is so mutilated as some have supposed. Therefore thus saith the Lord: XVIII. 13 Ask ye now of the nations, Who heard of the like? The horror she hath grossly wrought, Virgin of Israel. Fails from the mountain rock 14 The snow of Lebánon? Or the streams from the hills dry up, The cold flowing streams?(446) Yet Me have My people forgotten, 15 And burned(447) to vanity, Stumbling from off their ways, The tracks of yore, To straggle along the by-paths, An unwrought road; Turning their land to a waste, 16 A perpetual hissing. All who pass by are appalled, And shake their heads. With(448) an east wind strew them I shall, 17 In face of the foe. My back not my face shall I show them In their day of disaster. Personal passages follow in verses 18-23, and in XIX-XX. 6, the Symbol of the Earthen Jar and the episode of the Prophet’s arrest with its consequences, which we have already considered,(449) and then other personal passages in XX. 7-18. Ch. XXI. 1-10 is from the reign of Ṣedekiah; 11, 12 are a warning to the royal house of unknown date, and 13, 14 a sentence upon a certain stronghold, which in this connection ought to be Jerusalem, but cannot be because of the epithets _Inhabitress of the Vale_ and _Rock of the Plain_, that are quite inappropriate to Jerusalem. This is another proof of how the editors of the Book have swept into it a number of separate Oracles, whether relevant to each other or not, and whether Jeremiah’s own or from some one else. From Chs. XXII-XXIII. 8, a series of Oracles on the kings of Judah, we have had before us the elegy on Jehoahaz, XXII. 10 (with a prose note on 11, 12) and the denunciation of Jehoiakim, 13-19.(450) There remain the warning (in prose) to do judgment and justice with the threat on the king’s house, XXII. 1-5, and the following Oracles:— XXII. 6. For thus saith the Lord concerning the house of the king of Judah(451)— A Gilead art thou to Me, Or head of Lebánon, Yet shall I make thee a desert Of tenantless cities. I will hallow against thee destroyers, 7 Each with his weapons, They shall cut down the choice of thy cedars And fell them for fuel. 8. [And(452) nations shall pass by this city and shall say each to his mate, For what hath the Lord done thus to this great city? 9. And they shall answer, Because they forsook the Covenant of the Lord their God, and bowed themselves to other gods and served them.]