(perhaps quoted from a familiar elegy). _And yet I--I thought_ (chap. xxii. 21; Ps. xxx. 7), _Only this_--no more than this--_is my sickness: I can bear it!_ (וה אך אשאנ חליי; LXX. σου, Vulg. _mea_). The people had never fully realized the threatenings of the prophets, until they began to be accomplished. When they heard them, they had said, half-incredulously, half-mockingly, Is that all? Their false guides, too, had treated apparent danger as a thing of little moment, assuring them that their half reforms, and zealous outward worship, were sufficient to turn away the Divine displeasure (vi. 14). And so they said to themselves, as sinners are still in the habit of saying, "If the worst come to the worst, I can bear it. Besides, God is merciful, and things may turn out better for frail humanity than your preachers of wrath and woe predict. Meanwhile--I shall do as I please, and take my chance of the issue." The lament of the mourning mother continues: _My tent is laid waste and all my cords are broken; My sons went forth of me_ (to battle) _and are not; There is none to spread my tent any more, And to set up my curtains_ (cf. Amos ix. 11). Overhearing, as it were, this sorrowful lamentation (_qinah_), the prophet interposes with the reason of the calamity: _For the shepherds became brutish_ or _behaved foolishly_, stulte egerunt (Vulg.)--the leaders of the nation shewed themselves as insensate and silly as cattle--_and Iahvah they sought not_ (ii. 8); _Therefore_--as they had no regard for Divine counsel--_they dealt not wisely_ (iii. 15, ix. 23, xx. 11), _and all their flock was scattered abroad_. Once more, and for the last time, the prophet sounds the alarm: _Hark! a rumour! lo, it cometh! and a great uproar from the land of the north; to make the_ _cities of Judah a desolation, a haunt of jackals!_ It is not likely that the verse is to be regarded as spoken by the mourning country; she contemplates the evil as already done, whereas here it is only imminent (cf. iv. 6, vi. 22, i. 15). The piece concludes with a prayer (vv. 23-25), which may be considered either as an intercession by the prophet on behalf of the nation (cf. xviii. 20), or as a form of supplication which he suggests as suitable to the existing crisis. _I know, Iahvah, that man's way is not his own; That it pertaineth not to a man to walk and direct his own steps: Correct me, Iahvah, but with justice; Not in Thine anger, lest Thou make me small!_ (Partly quoted, Ps. vi. 1, xxxviii. 1.) _Pour out Thy fury upon the nations that know Thee not, And upon tribes that have not called upon Thy name; For they have devoured Jacob_ [_and will devour him_], [_and consumed him_], _and his pasture they have desolated!_ (Ps. lxxix. 6, 7, quoted from this place. In Jer. the LXX. omits "and will devour him;" while the psalm omits both of the bracketed expressions.)