The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

THE ORIGIN OF THE POEMS
for the fate of the poor weak king Zedekiah/ This is
very different from Jeremiah's treatment of him.^
It is not a serious objection that our poet says of
Zion,
"Yea, her prophets find no vision from the Lord," ^
while we know that Jeremiah had visions after the
destruction of Jerusalem,* because the general con-
dition may still have been one characterised by the
silencing of the many prophets with whose oracles the
Jews had been accustomed to solace themselves in vie\^
nor that he exclaims,
of threatened calamities ;
"Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of
the Lord?"^
although Jeremiah makes no mention of this twofold
assassination, because we have no justification for the
assumption that he recorded every horror of the great
tragedy ; nor, again, that the author is evidently fami-
liar with the Book of Deuteronomy, and refers fre-
quently to the " Song of Moses " in particular, for this is
just what we might have expected of Jeremiah ;
and yet
these and other similar but even less conclusive points
have been brought forward as difficulties. Perhaps
it is a more perplexing fact, in view of the traditional
hypothesis, that the poet appears to have made use
of the writings of Ezekiel. Thus the allusion to the
prophets who have " seen visions ... of vanity and foolishness,"
^ points to the fuller description of these men
in the writings of the prophet of the exile, where the
completeness of the picture shews that the priority is
' iv.