[670] Jer. ii. 1-35. Considering the very great part played by Jeremiah for nearly half a century of the last history of Judah, the non-mention of his name in the Book of Kings is a circumstance far from easy to explain. [671] Jer. iv. 6, A. V., "retire, stay not." Comp. Isa. x. 24-31. [672] Jer. iv. 7-27. [673] Jer. v. 15-17. [674] Jer. vi. 1, 22, 23, 24. [675] The almond tree (_shâqâd_) "seems to be awake (_shâqâd_), whatsoever trees are still sleeping in the torpor of winter" (Tristram _Nat. Hist. of the Bible_, 332; Jer. i. 11-14). [676] The name Kimmerii (on the Assyrian inscriptions Gimirrai) is connected with Gomer. The Persians call them Sakai or Scyths. The nomad Scyths had driven the Kimmerii from the Dniester while Psammetichus was King of Egypt. For allusions to this see Jer. vi. 22 _seq._, viii. 16, ix. 10. The first notice of them is in an inscription of Esarhaddon, B.C. 677, who says that he defeated "Tiushpa, _the Gimirrai, a roving warrior_, whose own country was remote." Zephaniah and Jeremiah were certainly thinking of the Scythians (Eichhorn, Hitzig, Ewald; and more recently Kuenen, _Onderzoek_, ii. 123; Wellhausen, _Skizzen_, 150). In B.C. 626 they could not have consciously had the Chaldæans in view, though, twenty-three years later, Jeremiah may have had. [677] See Ezek. xxxviii., xxxix. [678] Ezek. xxxviii. 2. So Gesenius, Hävernick, etc., and R.V. [679] The form in the Vulgate and the Alexandrian MS. of the LXX. is Mosech; in the Assyrian inscription, Muski. As far back as 1120 Tiglath-Pileser I. had overrun Tubal (the Tublai, Tabareni) and Moschi, between the Black Sea and the Taurus. They were neither Aryans nor Semites. In Gen. x. 2; 1 Chron. i. 5, Gog, Magog, Meshech, and Gomer are sons of Japheth. They are referred to in Rev. xx. 8. [680] Herod., i. 74, 103-106, iv. 1-22, vii. 64; Pliny, _H. N._, v. 16; Jos., _Antt._, I. vi. 1; Syncellus, _Chronogl._, i. 405. [681] Sayce, _Ethnology of the Bible; Records of the Past_, ix. 40; Schrader, _K. A. T._, 159. Some identify Gog with Gyges, King of Lydia, who was killed in battle _against_ the Scythians, but whose name stood for a geographical symbol of Asia Minor, sometimes called Lud. It is said that in 665 Gyges (Gugu) sent two Scythian chiefs as a present to Nineveh. [682] Hence, in 2 Macc. iv. 47, 3 Macc. vii. 5, Scythian is used with the modern connotation of "Barbarian." [683] Ezek. xxxii. 26, 27; Cheyne, _Jeremiah_ ("Men of the Bible") p. 31.