Judgment is poured out on the guilty nation, and their
land is handed over to others. Twice in these chapters
the prophet strikes the note of final judgment (cf. verse
19). It has seemed to some impossible that, so early
in his career, the prophet could contemplate such an
issue. I do not suppose that, for some years after
this, he regarded it as the inevitable. Still, for a
century the Ten Tribes had been in exile, and a thought-
ful mind could not well escape the suggestion that
a similar penalty might follow the greater guilt of
Judah. The influence of foreign customs had tainted
the springs of national life. Judah had rejected
Jahveh ; what should hinder Jahveh from rejecting
Judah ? It is no hterary artifice but rather an
intuition, rapid and startling — the intuition of a great
moral law, that lends crispness to his style, when he
says : Like as ye have forsaken Me and served
alien gods in your own land, so shall ye serve aliens
in a land that is not yours.
In a passage fuU of fine analysis and dramatic
power the prophet sums up the characteristics of his
age.
(a) It is a superficial age.
Verse 14. They have healed the hurt of the Daughter of
my people.
With a Ught hand.
WITHIN THE CITY 83

Saying, Peace, Peace,
And Peace was not.
