_hanging boughs will crackle in the flames._ And this fierce work of a barbarous soldiery is no chance calamity; it is the execution of a Divine judgment: _Iahvah Sabaoth ... Himself hath pronounced evil upon thee._ And yet further, it is the nation's own doing; the two houses of Israel have persistently laboured for their own ruin; they have brought it upon themselves. Man is himself the author of his own weal and woe; and they who are not "working out their own salvation," are working out their own destruction. _And it was Iahvah that gave Me knowledge, so that I well knew; at that time, Thou didst shew me their doings. But, for myself, like a favourite_ (lit. tame, friendly, gentle: iii. 4) _lamb that is led to the slaughter, I wist not that against me they had laid a plot. 'Let us fell the tree in its prime,[44] and let us cut him off out of the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more.' 'Yea, but Iahvah[45] Sabaoth judgeth righteously, trieth reins and heart. I shall see Thy vengeance on them; for unto Thee have I laid bare my cause.' Therefore thus said Iahvah; Upon the men of Anathoth that were seeking thy life, saying, Thou shalt not prophesy in the name of Iahvah, that thou die not by our hand:--therefore thus said Iahvah Sabaoth, Behold I am about to visit it upon them: the young men will die by the sword; their sons and their daughters will die by the famine. And a remnant they shall not have: for I will bring an evil unto the men of Anathoth, the year of their visitation_ (vv. 18-23).