For in these I delight.
25. Behold, the days are coming—Rede of the Lord—that I shall visit on everyone circumcised as to the foreskin. 26. Egypt and Judah and Edom, the sons of Ammon and Moab, and all with the corner[408] clipt, who dwell in the desert; for all the nations are uncircumcised in their heart and all the house of Israel.
Which just means that Israel, circumcised in the flesh but not in the spirit, are as bad as the heathen who share with them bodily circumcision.
Ch. X. 1-16 is a spirited, ironic poem on the follies of idolatry which bears both in style and substance marks of the later exile.
On the other hand X. 17-23 is a small collection of short Oracles in metre, which there is no reason to deny to Jeremiah. The text of the first, verses 17-18, is uncertain. If with the help of the Greek we render it as follows it implies not an actual, but an inevitable and possibly imminent, siege of Jerusalem. The couplet in 17 may alone be original and 18, the text of which is reducible neither to metre nor wholly to sense, a prose note upon it.
Sweep in thy wares from beyond,[409] X. 17
In siege that shalt sit!
18. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will sling out them that dwell in this land,[410] and will distress them in order that they may find ...(?)
Such is the most to be made of the fragment of which there are many interpretations. The next piece, 19-22, is generally acknowledged to be Jeremiah's. It has the ring of his earlier Oracles. [pg 208] The Hebrew and Greek texts differ as to the speaker in 19a. Probably the Greek is correct—the Prophet or the Deity addresses the city or nation and the Prophet replies for the latter identifying himself with her sufferings. It is possible, however, that the words But I said are misplaced and should begin the verse, in which case the Hebrew my is to be preferred to the Greek thy adopted below. If so the stoicism of 19 is remarkable.
Woe is me for thy[411] ruin, 19