The Neglected Prophet.

        If the length of a prophet’s writings were any criterion of the number of books that should be written about him, then Jeremiah would be the most neglected of all the prophets. Though scholars are now beginning to atone for past neglect, it still persists in the pulpit and Bible class. For this there are at least three strong reasons.

        Though most of the prophets employ poetry, and “Deutero-Isaiah” shows more sustained poetic structure, Jeremiah is the greatest lyric poet of them all. Only Hosea is comparable with him. With many of them we feel that they are merely using poetic forms, but Jeremiah is a poet. It need hardly be stressed that great poetry often demands much closer study than does prose to extract its full meaning.

        There was always a tendency for the prophet’s life to be­come part of his message, but with the exception of Jonah this is nowhere so marked as in Jeremiah. Indeed, toward the end of his work his life to a large extent became his message, where it has not been grasped that Jeremiah’s life is in itself a revelation of God, both his life and his spoken message have been seen out of focus.

        The present form of the book is peculiar, and demands preliminary study than is normally the case, if the true and flow of events are to be accurately grasped. The many striking differences between the Hebrew text and the LXX afford grounds for thinking that Baruch, indubitably the book’s chief editor, may have died, perhaps by violence, before he had completed his task.