Like unto these good figs
I look on the exiles of Judah,
Whom away from this place I have sent
To the Chaldeans' land for (their) good.
For good will I fix Mine eye upon them, 6
And bring them back to this land,
And build them and not pull them down,
And plant them and not pluck up.
7. And I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be for a people unto Me, and I will be to them for God, when they turn to me with all their heart. 8. But like the bad figs which cannot be eaten for their[488] badness—thus saith the Lord—so I give up Ṣedekiah, king of Judah, and his princes and the remnant of Jerusalem, the left in this land,[489] with them that dwell in the land of Egypt.[490] 9. And I will set them for consternation[491] to all kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I drive them. And I will send among them the sword, the famine and the pestilence, till [pg 240] they be consumed from off the ground which I gave to them.[492]
We cannot overestimate the effect upon Jeremiah himself, and through him and Ezekiel upon the subsequent history of Israel's religion, of this drastic separation in 597 of the exiles of Judah from the remnant left in the land. After suffering for years the hopelessness of converting his people, the Prophet at last saw an Israel of whom hope might be dared. It was not their distance which lent enchantment to his view for he gives proof that he can descry the dross still among them, despite the furnace through which they have passed.[493] But the banished were without doubt the best of the nation, and now they had “dreed their weird,” gone through the fire, been lifted out of the habits and passions of the past, and chastened by banishment—pensive and wistful as exile alone can bring men to be.