There seems no way out of the difficulty, but either to date the piece much earlier, assigning it, _e.g._, to the time of the prophet's earnest preaching in connexion with the reforming movement of Josiah, when the living generation would certainly remember the human sacrifices under Manasseh; or else to construe the passage in a very different sense, as follows. The first verse declares that the sin of _Judah_ is graven upon the tablet of _their heart_, and upon the horns of _their_ altars. The pronouns evidently shew that it is the guilt of _the nation_, not of a particular generation, that is asserted. The subsequent words agree with this view. The expression, "_Their_ sons" is to be understood in the same way as the expressions "_their_ heart," "_their_ altars." It is equivalent to the "sons of Judah" (_benê Jehudah_), and means simply the people of Judah, as now existing, the present generation. Now it does not appear that image-worship and the cultus of the high-places revived after their abolition by Josiah. Accordingly, the symbols of impure worship mentioned in this passage are not high-places and images but altars and Asherim, _i.e._, the wooden poles which were the emblems of the reproductive principle of Nature. What the passage therefore intends to say would seem to be this: "The guilt of the nation remains, so long as its children are mindful of their altars and Asherim erected beside[71] the evergreen trees on the high hills"; _i.e._, so long as they remain attached to the modified idolatry of the day. The general force of the words remains the same, whether they accuse the existing generation of serving sun-pillars (_maççeboth_) and sacred poles (_asherim_), or merely of hankering after the old forbidden rites. For so long as the popular heart was wedded to the former superstitions, it could not be said that any external abolition of idolatry was a sufficient proof of national repentance. The longing to indulge in sin is sin; and sinful it is not to hate sin. The guilt of the nation remained, therefore, and would remain, until blotted out by the tears of a genuine repentance towards Iahvah. But understood thus, the passage suits the time of Jehoiachin, as well as any other period. "Why," asks Naegelsbach, "should not Moloch have been the terror of the Israelitish children, when there was such real and sad ground for it, as in wanting in other bugbears which terrify the children of the present day?" To this we may reply, (1) Moloch is not mentioned at all, but simply altars and _asherim_; (2) would the word "remember" be appropriate in this case?