[800] Jer. xvii.
[801] Wellhausen indeed thinks that ver. 8 presupposes that Jerusalem is already devastated, reduced to the state of a shepherd's tower in the wilderness. This, however, is incorrect. The verse implies only that the whole country is overrun by the foe, Jerusalem alone standing, with the flock of God in it, like a fortified fold (cf. Isaiah i.).
[802] Roorda, reasoning from the Greek text, takes House of Ephratha as the original reading, with Bethlehem added later; and Hitzig properly reads Ephrath, giving its final letter to the next word which improves the grammar, thus: אפרת הצעיר
[803] Isa. xix. 19.
[804] So also Wellhausen.
[805] E.g. Ewald and Driver.
[806] For עמי read עמים with the LXX.
[807] Wellhausen states four. But תושיה of ver. 9 is an uncertain reading. רמיה is found in Hosea vii. 16, though the text of this, it is true, is corrupt. זכה in another verbal form is found in Isa. i. 16. There only remains מטה, but again it is uncertain whether we should take this in its late sense of tribe.
[808] And also Giesebrecht, Beiträge, p. 217.
[809] Micah i.; Jer. xxvi. 18.