This great host with its splendid equipment must surely conquer. The prophet professes to await its triumphant return; but he sees instead a breathless mob of panic-stricken fugitives, and pours upon them the torrent of his irony:—
"How is it that I behold this? These heroes are dismayed and have turned their backs;
Their warriors have been beaten down;
They flee apace, and do not look behind them:
Terror on every side—is the utterance of Jehovah."
Then irony passes into explicit malediction:—
"Let not the swift flee away, nor the warrior escape;
Away northward, they stumble and fall by the river Euphrates."
Then, in a new strophe, Jeremiah again recurs in imagination to the proud march of the countless hosts of Egypt:—
"Who is this that riseth up like the Nile,
Whose waters toss themselves like the rivers?
Egypt riseth up like the Nile,
His waters toss themselves like the rivers.
And he saith, I will go up and cover the land"
(like the Nile in flood);
"I will destroy the cities and their inhabitants"
(and, above all other cities, Babylon).
Again the prophet urges them on with ironical encouragement:—