_Hæc dicit Dominus: Non glorietur sapiens in sapientia sua._ Glancing back over the whole passage, we discern an inward relation between these verses and the preceding discourse. It is not the outward props of state-craft, and strong battalions, and inexhaustible wealth, that really and permanently uphold a nation; not these, but the knowledge of Iahvah, a just insight into the true nature of God, and a national life regulated in all its departments by that insight. At the outset of this third section of his discourse (ix. 3-6), Jeremiah declared that corrupt Israel _knew not_ and _refused to know_ its God. At the beginning of the entire piece (vii. 3 _sq._), he urged his countrymen to _amend their ways and their doings_, and not go on trusting in _lying words_ and doing the opposite of _lovingkindness and justice and righteousness_, which alone are pleasing to Iahvah (Mic. vi. 8), Who _delighteth in lovingkindness and not sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God more than in burnt-offerings_ (Hos. vi. 6). And just as in the opening section the sacrificial worship was disparaged, taken as an "opus operatum," so here at the close circumcision is declared to have no independent value as a means of securing Divine favour (ix. 25). Thus the entire discourse is rounded off by the return of the end to the beginning; and the main thought of the whole, which Jeremiah has developed and enforced with so much variety of feeling and oratorical and poetical ornament, is the eternally true thought that a service of God which is purely external is no service at all, and that rites without a loving obedience are an insult to the Majesty of Heaven.