The tone in which Jeremiah addressed the people was frequently disapproved by the political authorities of the time. He appears to have been an ever-faithful witness to the Most High, and to have sought to support his honour as well in the good days of King Josiah as in the evil days of his degenerate sons. In the later reigns it was said that he dispirited the people, and that they were rendered by him less energetic iu the resistance which they offered to the armies of Chaldma. This led to his being placed under restraint and punished.
Hitherto our remarks have been confined to the first forty-two chapters and to the fifty-second, the last. But when we arrive at the forty-third chapter we find a new and very important circumstance life of Jeremiah. In neither the first nor the second captivity was Jeremiah carried away with his countrymen and king to Babylon : he still remained in Judma, lamenting her fallen and desolate state, and exhorting and encouraging the remnant of the people to continue in the land till they abonld be forcibly expelled. This was distasteful to a powerful party, who thought they saw in Egypt a safe place of retreat from the power of the King of Babylon, and who finally led the people that remained into that country, carrying Jeremiah with them. They settled at a place called Taphanhes, which is probably the Daphne) of the Greek geographers. The forty-fourth chapter is an exhortation which he delivered to his countrymen in Egypt. But in the forty-fifth chapter we are carried back to the times of King Jehoiakim; so little of order and regularity is there in the making up of this book. After this there follow various predictive discourses delivered by Jeremiah at various and uncertain periods concerning other nations, the Egyptians, Philistines, Moahites, Ammonites, Edomites, and others, ending with an awful denunciation against Babylon, in which the utter desolation of that great and flourishing city is predicted, and the return of the people from their long captivity. The prophecy of the utter abolition of Babylon, so that
its site should become a place for the abode of wild beasts of the desert, is very remarkable.
The sacred books contain no later information concerning the 'prophet than that he was among those who went to Taphanhes. But some of the early Christian writers relate of him that he was stoned to death by his countrymen in Egypt for preaching against their idolatry.
Two very different accounts are given of the occasion on which he wrote the book of Lamentations. The old opinion, after Josephus, was that it was written on the death of King Josiah : but the later and more probable opinion is that it is a bewailing of the lost state of Judaea when it had suffered PO dreadfully from the armies of Nebu chadnezzar. It is a very tender and pathetic poem, consisting of five portions, or, as they may be considered, distinct elegies. The structure is very artificial, the successive stanzas in each of the elegies beginning with the letters of the alphabet taken in order. Some of the Psalms are also in their structure of this form.
Some persona have imagined that they see in the style of Jeremiah proofs of original rusticity. There are not the dignity and splendour of Isaiah, but there are great beauties peculiar to this prophet, whose province appears rather to be the expression of grief and concern than of glowing indignation.