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does not stand in contradiction to what is said in Jer. 39:29f. against the current proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth have become blunt," viz., that in the future, after the restoration of Israel, "every one shall die for his own iniquity, and the teeth of every one who eats sour grapes shall become blunt." One statement would contradict the other only if the latter meant that those who bear the punishment were guiltless, or thought themselves such. But how far this thought was from the mind of the suppliant in Lam 5:7, is shown by what he says in Lam 5:16 : "Woe unto us, for we have sinned." According to these words, those in Lam 5:7 can only mean, "We atone not merely for our own sins, but also the sins of our fathers," or, "The sins of our fathers as well as our own are visited on us." This confession accords with Scripture (cf. Exo 20:5; Jer 16:11, etc.), and is radically different from the proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes," etc., which was constantly in the mouth of those who considered themselves innocent, and who thereby perverted the great truth, that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children who hate Him, into the false statement, that innocent children must atone for the sins of their fathers. On this, cf. also the exposition of Lam 5:7. But when Schrader, following Nöldeke, further remarks, "that Jeremiah would hardly have said nothing whatever about God's having foretold all this suffering through him," there lies at the foundation of this remark the preposterous notion, that Jeremiah ought to have brought himself prominently forward in the Lamentations (supposing him to have written them), as one who ought not to suffer the evil under which the people were groaning. Such gross Pelagianism was foreign to the prophet Jeremiah. No one need speak, therefore, of a contradiction between the Lamentations and the prophecies of Jeremiah.
As little proof is there for the assertion that the author of the Lamentations made use of the prophecies of Ezekiel. Nägelsbach and Schrader, in support of this allegation, have adduced only Lam 2:14, compared with Eze 12:24; Eze 13:5.; and Lam 2:15, compared with Eze 27:3; Eze 28:12. Nägelsbach says: "The words, נביאיך חזוּ לך, in Lam 2:14, are no doubt a quotation from Eze 12:24; Eze 13:6-11, Eze 13:14-15, Eze 13:23;