Who call not Thy Name!
For Jacob they devoured and consumed,
And wasted his homestead][418]
Another series of Oracles, as reasonably referred to the reign of Jehoiakim as to any other stage of Jeremiah's career, is scattered over Chs. XI-XX. I reserve to a later lecture upon his spiritual conflict and growth those which disclose his debates with his God, his people and himself—XI. 18-XII. 6, XV. 10-XVI. 9, XVII. 14-18, XVIII. 18-23, XX. 7-18, and I take now only such as deal with the character and the doom of the nation.
Of these the first in the order in which they appear in the Book is XI. 15, 16, with which we have already dealt,[419] and the second is XII. 7-13, generally acknowledged to be Jeremiah's own. It is undated, but of the invasions of this time the one it most clearly reflects is that of the mixed hordes let loose by Nebuchadrezzar on Judah in 602 or in 598.[420] The invasion is more probably described as actual than imagined as imminent. God Himself is the speaker: His House, as the parallel Heritage shows, is not the Temple [pg 211] but the Land, His Domain. The sentence pronounced upon it is a final sentence, yet delivered by the Divine Judge with pain and with astonishment that He has to deliver it against His Beloved; and this pathos Jeremiah's poetic rendering of the sentence finely brings out by putting verse 9a in the form of a question. The Prophet feels the Heart of God as moved as his own by the doom of the people.
I have forsaken My House, XII. 7
I have left My Heritage,
I have given the Beloved of My Soul
To the hand of her foes.
My Heritage to Me is become 8