FIRST SECTION: CHAPS. I., II. THE HEATHEN'S CRIMES AND ISRAEL'S. A series of short oracles of the same form, directed impartially against the political crimes of all the states of Palestine, and culminating in a more detailed denunciation of the social evils of Israel, whose doom is foretold, beneath the same flood of war as shall overwhelm all her neighbours. SECOND SECTION: CHAPS. III.-VI. ISRAEL'S CRIMES AND DOOM. A series of various oracles of denunciation, which have no further logical connection than is supplied by a general sameness of subject, and a perceptible increase of detail and articulateness from beginning to end of the section. They are usually grouped according to the recurrence of the formula _Hear this word_, which stands at the head of our present chaps. iii., iv. and v.; and by the two cries of _Woe_ at v. 18 and vi. 1. But even more obvious than these commencements are the various climaxes to which they lead up. These are all threats of judgment, and each is more strenuous or explicit than the one that has preceded it. They close with iii. 15, iv. 3, iv. 12, v. 17, v. 27 and vi. 14; and according to them the oracles may be conveniently divided into six groups. 1. III. 1-15. After the main theme of judgment is stated in 1, 2, we have in 3-8 a parenthesis on the prophet's right to threaten doom; after which 9-15, following directly on 2, emphasise the social disorder, threaten the land with invasion, the people with extinction and the overthrow of their civilisation. 2. IV. 1-3, beginning with the formula _Hear this word_, is directed against women and describes the siege of the capital and their captivity. 3. IV. 4-12, with no opening formula, contrasts the people's vain propitiation of God by ritual with His treatment of them by various physical chastisements--drought, blight and locusts, pestilence, earthquake--and summons them to prepare for another, unnamed, visitation. _Jehovah God of Hosts is His Name._ 4. V. 1-17, beginning with the formula _Hear this word_, and a dirge over a vision of the nation's defeat, attacks, like the previous group, the lavish ritual, sets in contrast to it Jehovah's demands for justice and civic purity; and, offering a reprieve if Israel will repent, closes with the prospect of an universal mourning (vv. 16, 17), which, though introduced by a _therefore_, has no logical connection with what precedes it.