prominence of mountains amid their surroundings is made an image for the certainty of this event as compared with other events. iv. For the whole compare Isaiah IV. iv, and for the latter part the ballads quoted in Numbers (Exodus volume of this series, page 249). This comparison makes an excellent study for the floating Doom poetry worked up by different poets in different forms. Page 187. Yet will I bring again the captivity of Moab. For similar postscripts compare Isaiah IV. iv, xi, xii; and above, v, ix of Book X. vi. Compare Obadiah: here again is a good example of floating Doom poetry worked up by different poets. vii. The effect here is the realistic vision of overthrow preceding the cause of that overthrow in Jehovah's coming to judge [at the words How is the city of praise not forsaken?]. Compare the Watchman prophecies of Isaiah (IV. x) and notes on pages 216, 234 of that volume. viii. Here again we have a resemblance to the Watchman prophecies of Isaiah (see previous note): Divine cries of onset alternate with prophetic description. x. This Doom of Babylon is the most elaborate of all Doom Prophecies. It has the usual structure of alternation between [prose] Divine word of denunciation and lyric songs of realisation. But it has in addition to this a sectional structure: seven distinct sections, the middle or climax section having itself a sevenfold structure by distinct images applied to Babylon and elaborated. The spirit of the whole is purely lyric, there being no dramatic progression of movement; thus the realistic lyrics bring forward the theme of the attack on Babylon and its fall with wonderful variety, but not in any temporal order of incident. [One of these lyrics exalts God as against the idols; another is a wailing dialogue of suffering Zion and Jerusalem; a third presents the delivered exiles remembering their wrongs.] There is in place of dramatic movement a parallelism and correspondence of sections, thus: Pages 202, 209. Leb-kamai, Sheshach. See note on page 226. 230 APPENDIX This is shown to be an appendix by the words that precede: Thus far are the words of Jeremiah. It is identical with the corresponding portions of the Book of Kings, and deals with the fall of the kings of Judah, not with the personal history of Jeremiah. 231 |