For the present, when retribution is already at the doors, when already the Divine wrath has visibly broken forth, his prevailing purpose is not so much to suggest a way of escape, as to bring home to the heart and conscience of the nation the true meaning of the public calamities. They are the consequence of habitual rebellion against God. _And I will scatter them like stubble passing away to_ (= before: cf. xix. 10) _the wind of the wilderness. This is thy lot_ (_fem._ thine, O Jerusalem), _the portion of thy measures_ (others: _lap_) _from Me, saith Iahvah; because thou forgattest Me, and didst trust in the Lie. And I also--I will surely strip thy skirts to thy face, and thy shame shall be seen!_ (Nah. iii. 5). _Thine adulteries and thy neighings, the foulness of thy fornications upon the hills in the field_ (iii. 2-6)--_I have seen thine abominations!_ (For the construction, compare Isa. i. 13.) _Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! After how long yet wilt thou not become clean?_ (2 Kings v. 12, 13). That which lies before the citizens in the near future is not deliverance, but dispersion in foreign lands. The onset of the foe will sweep them away, as the blast from the desert drives before it the dry stubble of the corn-fields (cf. iv. 11, 12). This is no chance calamity, but a recompense allotted and meted out by Iahvah to the city that forgot Him and "trusted in the Lie" of Baal-worship and the associated superstitions. The city that dealt shamefully in departing from her God, and dallying with foul idols, shall be put to shame by Him before all the world (ver. 26 recurring to the thought of ver. 22, but ascribing the exposure directly to Iahvah). Woe--certain woe--awaits Jerusalem; and it is but a faint and far-off glimmer of hope that is reflected in the final question, which is like a weary sigh: _After how long yet wilt thou not become clean?_ How long must the fiery process of cleansing go on, ere thou be purged of thine inveterate sins? It is a recognition that the punishment will not be exterminative; that God's chastisements of His people can no more fail at last than His promises; that the triumph of a heathen power and the disappearance of Iahvah's Israel from under His heaven cannot be the final phase of that long eventful history which began with the call of Abraham. FOOTNOTES: [54] Also xlviii. 12; Lam. iv. 2; Isa. xxx. 14. [55] LXX. ἀπὸ κεφαλῆς ὑμῶν.. Read מֵרָאשֹׁתֵיכֶם = מֵרָאשׁיכֶם; and cf. Assyrian _rešu_, plur. _rešêtu_ (= ראשות).