George Adam Smith’s 1923 Lectures on Jeremiah

These are the 1923 Baird Lectures given by George Adam Smith on the book of Jeremiah. They provide an introduction both to the prophet and his book. This title is in the public domain.

George Adam Smith [1856-1942], Jeremiah, Being the Baird Lectures for 1923, 3rd edn., 1924. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1923. Hbk. pp.394. [Click to download complete book in pdf]

Table of Contents

Preface
Preliminary

Lecture 1: The Man and the Book
Lecture 2: The Poet
Lecture 3: Prophet – His Youth and His Call
Lecture 4: The Prophet in the Reigh of Josiah, 627-608 B.C.
Lecture 5: Under Jehoiakim, 608-597 B.C.
Lecture 6: To the End and After, 597-B.C.?
Lecture 7: The Story of His Soul
Lecture 8: God, Man and the New Covenant

Appendices
Index of Texts
Index of Names and Subjects

Preface

The purpose and the scope of this volume are set forth in the beginning of Lecture I. Lecture II. explains the various metrical forms in which I understand Jeremiah to have delivered the most of his prophecies, and which I have endeavoured, however imperfectly, to reproduce in English. Here it is necessary only to emphasise the variety of these forms, the irregularities which are found in them, and the occasional passage of the Prophet from verse to prose and from prose to verse, after the manner of some other bards or rhapsodists of his race. The reader will keep in mind that what appear as metrical irregularities on the printed page would not be felt to be so when sung or chanted; just as is the case with the folk-songs of Palestine to-day. I am well aware that metres so primitive and by our canons so irregular have been more rhythmically rendered by the stately prose of our English Versions… [Continue reading]