While we admit that no Christian may ordinarily pray for the annihilation of any but spiritual enemies, we must remember that no Christian can possibly occupy the same peculiar position as a prophet of the Old Covenant; and we may fairly ask whether any who may incline to judge harshly of Jeremiah on the ground of passages like this, have fully realized the appalling circumstances which wrung these prayers from his cruelly tortured heart? _We_ find it hard to forgive small personal slights, often less real than imaginary; how should we comport ourselves to persons whose shameless ingratitude rewarded evil for good to the extent of seeking our lives? Few would be content, as Jeremiah was, with putting the cause in the hand of God, and abstaining from all attempts at personal vindication of wrongs. It surely betrays a failure of imaginative power to realize the terrible difficulties which beset the path of one who, in a far truer sense than Elijah, was left alone to uphold the cause of true religion in Israel, and not less, a very inadequate knowledge of our own spiritual weakness, when we are bold to censure or even to apologise for the utterances of Jeremiah. The whole question assumes a different aspect, when it is noticed that the brief "Thus said Iahvah!" of the next chapter (xix.) virtually introduces the Divine reply to the prophet's prayer. He is now bidden to foreshow the utter destruction of the Jewish polity by a symbolic act which is even more unambiguous than the language of the prayer. He is to take a common earthenware bottle (_baqbûq_, as if "pour-pour"; from _baqaq_, "to pour out"), and, accompanied by some of the leading personages of the capital, heads of families and priests, to go out of the city to the valley of ben Hinnom, and there, after a solemn rehearsal of the crimes perpetrated on that very spot in the name of religion, and after predicting the consequent retribution which will shortly overtake the nation, he is to dash the vessel in pieces before his companions' eyes, in token of the utter and irreparable ruin which awaits their city and people. Having enacted his part in this striking scene, Jeremiah returns to the court of the temple, and there repeats the same terrible message in briefer terms before all the people; adding expressly that it is the reward of their stubborn obstinacy and deafness to the Divine voice. The prophet's imprecations of evil thus appear to have been ratified at the time of their conception by the Divine voice, which spoke in the stillness of his after reflexion. FOOTNOTE: [80] Instead of שדי מצור "from the rock of the field," I have ventured to read שדי מצוף (Lam. iii. 54; Deut. xi. 4; 2 Kings vi. 6). For ינתשו "plucked up" "uprooted," which is inappropriate in connexion with water, Schnurrer's ינתשו "dried up" (Isa. xix. 5; Jer. li. 30), is probably right. In the second couplet, I read זבים for זרים, which is meaningless, and transpose קרים with נוזלים.