Take, to begin with, the following, XIV. 1 ff.:--
_The Word of the Lord to Jeremiah Concerning the Drought._
Jerusalem's cry is gone up, Judah is mourning, The gates thereof faint in Black grief to the ground.
Her nobles sent their menials for water, They came to the pits; Water found none and returned, Empty their vessels. [Abashed and confounded They cover their heads.](76)
The tillers(77) of the ground are dismayed, For no rain hath been(78); And abashed are the ploughmen, They cover their heads.
The hind on the moor calves and abandons, For the grass has not come. On the bare heights stand the wild asses, Gasping for air With glazen eyes-- Herb there is none!
Though our sins do witness against us, Lord act for the sake of Thy Name! [For many have been our backslidings, 'Fore Thee have we sinned.]
Hope of Israel, His Saviour In time of trouble, Why be like a traveller(79) through the land, Or wayfaring guest of a night? Why art Thou as one that is stunned,-- Strong yet unable to save?
Yet Lord, Thou art in our midst, [O'er us Thy Name hath been called] Do not forsake us!
So fond to wander are they, Their feet they restrain not, The Lord hath no pleasure in them, He remembers their guilt.(80)
The following dirge is on either a war or a pestilence, or on both, for they often came together. The text of the first lines is uncertain, the Hebrew and Greek differing considerably:--
Call ye the keening women to come, And send for the wise ones, That they hasten and sing us a dirge, Till with tears our eyes run down, Our eyelids with water.
For death has come up by our windows, And into our palaces, Cutting off from the streets the children, The youths from the places. And fallen are the corpses of men Like dung on the field, Or sheaves left after the reaper, And nobody gathers.(81)
The minatory discourses are sombre and lurid. Sometimes the terror foretold is nameless and mystic, yet even then the Prophet's simplicity does not fail but rather contributes to the vague, undefined horror. In the following it is premature night which creeps over the hills--night without shelter for the weary or refuge for the hunted.
Hear and give ear, be not proud, For the Lord hath spoken! Give glory to the Lord your God Before it grows dark, And before your feet stumble-- On the mountains of dusk. While ye look for light, He turns it to gloom And sets it thick darkness.(82)