the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbour.... I am against them that prophesy lying [p.8] dreams" (Jeremiah 23. 30-32). Jeremiah could hardly have voiced such condemnation of false prophets if he and they together spoke out of their own imaginations, insights and opinions. The warnings against these false prophets are numerous. It was declared a terrible sin to speak in the name of Jehovah if He did not send them. The criterion of a true prophet was that his words would come to pass. Thus Isaiah and Jeremiah never draw on their own opinions or those of their contemporaries but always on a "thus saith the Lord" or "the Word of the Lord." The content of the true prophetic message was always authenticated by prediction. There is so much of this prediction in Isaiah that the liberal scholars have been forced to predicate several Isaiahs at a later time in order to account for prophecy after the event. Such is true of the predicted defeat of the king of Assyria (Isaiah 37. 33, 34). "He shall not come into this city: by the way that he came, the same shall he return." The same is true of the prophesied release of the Jewish captives under Cyrus (Isaiah 44. 28 and 45. 1). This is true of Jeremiah's accurate prediction of the exact length of the Israelite captivity in Babylon of seventy years (Jeremiah 25. 13ff). Such predictions could not have come about except by divine impartation